Reuters
Ben Blanchard – Analysis
BEIJING (Reuters) – Big on spit and polish and parades but short on experience, new technology and force coordination, China’s military has far to go before its bite begins to approach its increasingly loud, and for some fearsome, bark.
China has invested billions of dollars in its armed forces and is developing advanced fighters and missiles, considering building its first aircraft carrier and is trying to slim its bloated ranks down to a lean, high-tech military.
The 2010 Defense budget unveiled last week was 7.5 percent higher than last year, a modest rise by China’s recent standards, but impressive compared to other big powers.
Those rises have raised alarm in Taiwan, the self-ruled island China claims as its own, the rest of the region, and especially in the United States, the world’s only superpower with a military reach that far exceeds China’s.
In a report to Congress published last month, the Pentagon said it was concerned by China’s missile buildup and increasingly advanced capabilities in the Pacific region.
Yet while China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) looks increasingly fierce on paper, analysts — and even Chinese army officers — say it will be a long time before the country has the means to effectively challenge U.S. power, if ever.
“What is their readiness level? How effective are these things they’ve developed themselves?” said Drew Thompson, of the Nixon Center, a think tank in Washington.
“Is their indigenous technology really working, or does it simply exist like a lot of things in the Chinese system, on paper? I would posit it probably leans more toward the latter.”
After a spike in tension that has stoked nationalist Chinese calls for a hard shove back against U.S. influence, some PLA officers are also trying to discourage chest-thumping.
“There’s no way China can threaten the United States,” Lt. Gen. Li Dianren, a professor at the National Defense University, told Reuters on the sidelines of the annual session of parliament.
“Anyone with even a bit of common sense knows that our capabilities do not come even close to matching those of the U.S. In terms of economics, technology and the military, the gap is huge. How can we threaten them?” he added. more …
