Who worries about arms race more, China or the U.S.?
- By Du Jianguo
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China.org.cn, August 17, 2011
Gates speaks in a harsh tone to China while complaining in his own country. The arms race is probably not an easy thing for the U.S., either.
Gates is not the only one who doubts the U.S.'s ability to afford an arms race. In June, the Web site of the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post carried an article by Brad Gloria Thurman, executive director of the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies' Pacific Forum, warning U.S. policymakers not to exaggerate the China threat. Like Gates, Thurman took the U.S.-Soviet arms race as a call to caution. But this time, the Soviets had been replaced by the U.S. Thurman said China has deliberately exaggerated its military power, forcing the U.S. to allocate increasingly scarce resources to defense so that these resources cannot be used in other more productive areas. China has cast off the yoke of the global economic crisis. It has a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. U.S. policy makers are facing a new reality—financial strain. The U.S. has to determine its spending priorities in the face of an increasingly tightening budget.
In short, the U.S. is now short of money. It cannot afford an arms race.
In early July, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited China. The agenda China arranged for Mullen during his visit featured a tour of China's latest submarine, a close look at an SU-27 jet fighter and a front-row seat for a complex counterterrorism exercise. What's did both sides make of the visit?
Allowing Mullen to have a close look at China's important weapons and equipment demonstrates the PLA's strength and confidence, said Luo Yuan, a researcher with the PLA Academy of Military Science. "We showed advanced weapons to you, which means we have better ones," Luo said. The power of Chinese army is now "less than dominant but more than self-defensive." The demonstration was meant to signal to the U.S. "don't provoke China," Luo said. It was rare to see the Chinese military take such a tough stance in the past.
The New York Times published an article on July 14 entitled "U.S. and China Try to Agree on Military Strategy." In it, Michael Wines analyzes the "relationship between the world's most powerful and the world's fastest rising armed forces" in the wake of Mullen's China visit. According to the article, "the United States could be forced into another arms race." But the outlook is not optimistic, because "unlike during the cold war, it would be China that has billions to spend on new weapons and the United States that might be forced to choose between guns and butter."
(This article was written in Chinese and translated by Li Huiru.)
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