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Filed under the What Channel Have they Been Watching category: Rice: U.S. Concerned About Rising China (ANNE GEARAN - The Associated Press)
November 17, 2006 11:19 PM
Copyright The Associated Press
WASHINGTON
The United States has some concerns about a rising China,
including a military expansion that may be excessive,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday.
Beijing has spent heavily in recent years on adding
submarines, missiles, fighter planes and other high-tech
weapons to its arsenal and extending the reach of the 2.3
million-member People’s Liberation Army, the world’s
largest fighting force.
Its reported military budget rose more than 14 percent
this year to $35.3 billion, but outside estimates of
China’s true spending are up to three times that level.
“There are concerns about China’s military buildup,” Rice
told a television interviewer. “It’s sometimes seemed
outsized for China’s regional role.”
Beijing insists its multibillion-dollar buildup is
defensive, but it has alarmed some Asian neighbors and
U.S. military planners who see China as a potential
threat to U.S. military pre-eminence in the Pacific.
Asked whether U.S. foreign policy toward China is aimed
at containing China’s ability to flex military power,
Rice turned the question to politics and economics.
“U.S. policy is aimed at having China be a responsible
stakeholder in international politics,” she replied.
“That means that Chinese energy, Chinese growth, Chinese
incredible innovation and entrepreneurship, would be
channeled into an international economy in which
everybody can compete and compete equally.”
Rice, in Asia with President Bush for a regional economic
forum, said China’s economic growth “has been a net gain
for the international system.” But she also ticked off a
list of U.S. concerns including questions of economic
fairness and China’s record on human rights.
“There are concerns about a rising China, concerns about
China’s transition, concerns about whether the Chinese
economy will in fact act in a way that is consistent with
the level playing field that the international economy
needs,” Rice said in the interview with CNBC Asia.
U.S. concerns are manageable within a relationship she
described as strong overall, Rice said. She visited China
last month to shore up United Nations sanctions against
China’s ally, North Korea, and she credited Beijing with
cooperation in opposing the North’s nuclear development.
Bush and Rice were both meeting with their Chinese
counterparts during this weekend’s Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation summit.
A congressional advisory panel on Thursday questioned
China’s willingness to be a more responsible
international player, saying world prosperity depends on
China’s abandoning a single-minded pursuit of its “own
narrow national interests.”
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
made 44 recommendations in its annual report to
lawmakers. It calls on the United States to combat
Chinese attempts to isolate Taiwan by supporting the
island’s membership in various world bodies, and urges
Washington to pressure Beijing to help end the bloody
conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region.
“While China is a global actor, its sense of
responsibility has not kept up with its expanding power,”
said Larry Wortzel, chairman of the commission, which
Congress created in 2000 to investigate U.S.-China
issues.
The panel also admonished U.S. intelligence agencies,
urging the United States to set up “a more effective
program” for gathering information about China’s military
buildup and development.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu
said she had not seen the report, but “we are against the
attempt by any country or any organization to interfere
with China’s internal affairs under the pretext of the
Taiwan question and impede our reunification course.”
The report said China’s global reach extends beyond East
Asia to the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Latin
America, where China “is coming to be regarded almost as
a second superpower.”
Posted at 11:19 PM
