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July 11 翻杂志的时候看到一篇文章Is China a Friend, a Foe, or Both?
《US News and World Report》June 5，2006
With China on its way to becoming an economic superpower, evidence suggests that Beijing is also on its way to becoming a more formidable Pacific military power as well. A Pentagon report last week pegged Beijing's military spending at two to three times the officially reported $35 billion. That figure (even if adjusted for relative purchasing power) still is dwarfed by U.S. military spending, which tops $400 billion a year. But the Pentagon says that China's spending already is shifting regional military balances. "Long-term trends in China's strategic nuclear forces modernization, land- and sea-based access denial capabilities, and emerging precision-strike weapons," the report says, "have the potential to pose credible threats to modern militaries operating in the region."
In response, Beijing said its buildup is "defensive in nature." Analysts note that China takes "defensive" to include possible military intervention to stop an independence movement by Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province. The Pentagon says that China now has deployed 710 to 790 short-range ballistic missiles across the strait from Taiwan, roughly 100 more than a year ago, and is expanding its air and sea forces. From a Chinese perspective, those forces are both a deterrent to Taiwanese independence and, if that fails, to American intervention in a cross-strait military conflict. Still, shared U.S.-Chinese economic interests mitigate the military competition, and John Chapman, head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said last week that it is "somewhat encouraging" to see stepped-up contacts between American and Chinese military leaders. "Yet," he said, "these contacts have been more ceremonial than substantive." TrackbacksThe trackback URL for this entry is: http://superphilips.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E677C06D9C3962C8!405.trak Weblogs that reference this entry
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