18 February 2005
U.S. Monitoring China's Military Improvements, Rumsfeld Says
Defense secretary hopes China will be "constructive force" in Asia
By Jane A. Morse
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The United States is closely watching China's military improvements and hoping the country will evolve into "a constructive force" in the Asia-Pacific region, says Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
At a February 17 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld addressed questions about China's military modernization -- most especially of its navy -- revolving around comments made by CIA Director Porter Goss at a February 16 hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
At that hearing, Goss warned: "Beijing's military modernization and military build-up [are] tilting the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait. Improved Chinese capabilities ... threaten U.S. forces in the region." Goss also noted that in 2004 China increased its ballistic-missile forces deployed across from Taiwan and rolled out several new submarines.
"China continues to develop more robust, survivable nuclear-armed missiles, as well as conventional capabilities for use in a regional conflict," the CIA director said. The full text of Goss's statement, as prepared for delivery, is available online at: http://intelligence.senate.gov/0502hrg/050216/goss.pdf
Rumsfeld acknowledged that China's increasing military muscle is an issue the U.S. Department of Defense "thinks about and is concerned about and is attentive to." China's defense budget is growing along with its economy, he said, and the country is purchasing "a great deal of relatively modern equipment from Russia." China's navy, Rumsfeld said, has been expanding along with China's ability to reach out greater distances from its own shores.
Rumsfeld said that although the U.S. Navy remains the only navy capable of remaining at sea for extended periods of time, "trend lines" suggested by China's current military improvements are "something that we have to think about."
During his February 16 testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld noted that, in addition to buying technologically sophisticated military equipment, China is producing its own. He added that China is "actively trying to get access to European technology by getting the arms embargo ban lifted from the European Union, which it looks like the European Union is along the track to do at some point."
"The People's Republic of China is a country that we hope and pray enters the civilized world in an orderly way," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The U.S. hope is that China becomes "a constructive force in that part of the world and a player in the global environment that's constructive," he said. However, he said, China has "competing pressures between the desire to grow, which takes a free economy as opposed to a command economy, and their dictatorial system, which is not a free system. And there's a tension there … we need to be attentive to it."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2005&m=February&x=20050218151729ajesrom0.7062036&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html
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