June 14, 2007 :: Washington Post :: Analysis
Gary J. Schmitt writes for The Washington Post on China's increased military spending. The U.S. has a tendency to "complain that we don't know exactly how much China is spending on its military and what exactly it is acquiring. Most important, we complain that we don't know the strategic 'why' behind this buildup." While most scholars attribute China's ballooning military spending to political circumstance or the size of the U.S.'s budget, Schmitt argues that in fact:
[T]he Chinese military buildup really began after the demise of the Soviet Union—that is, precisely when China had the least reason to worry about its defense needs. And the buildup continued during a period when the United States was cutting its own defense budget by significant amounts. Moreover, no other Asian regional power was putting forward double-digit defense increases. To the contrary, Taiwan—presumably China's main military concern—was slashing its defense budget. And Japan, the only possible regional ‘great power' competitor to China, was suffering from a decade of economic stagnation, with a static defense budget to match.
Schmitt suggests that the Chinese believe a first-class army is critical for its global stature in its quest to become a world power. "The Chinese are a proud people and they want to be seen as a powerful, potentially dominant, state. And power, they understand, includes not only a strong economy but a powerful military. When the Chinese look at the world today, who gets in their way most of the time? It's certainly not the Europeans, who have economic strength but little hard power. It's the United States." (Article)
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