China criticizes Pentagon’s military report

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has criticized a U.S. report on
its military power, saying it exaggerated the country’s defense
capabilities and showed a “cold war mentality.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said the Pentagon’s 2006 China
Military Power Report released on Tuesday spreads the “China
threat theory” and endangers international relations.

“The (report) has a ‘cold war mentality’, deliberately
overstates China’s military power and expenditure, continues to
spread the ‘China threat theory’ endangers international
relations and brashly interferes in China’s domestic affairs,”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in a statement.

“China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and resolute
opposition,” he said a day before Christopher Hill, the U.S.
chief negotiator to talks on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear
program, arrived in Beijing on Thursday to meet his Chinese
counterpart.

Liu denied the Pentagon report’s assertions that China’s
military modernization altered power balances in the
Asia-Pacific region, saying China was a peace-loving nation
that adhered to a path of peaceful development.

The Pentagon also said China was adding about 100
short-range missiles a year for deployment opposite Taiwan,
shifting the balance of power between the two toward the
mainland.

Liu said China would never tolerate independence for
Taiwan, the self-ruled island it claims as its own, but added
that it stuck to the principal of peaceful reunification.

The Foreign Ministry also requested that Washington, which
is obliged by law to help Taiwan defend itself, abide by the
“one-China policy,” stop selling weapons to Taiwan and not send
“wrong signals” to the Taiwan independence forces.

The Pentagon has been raising alarms over China’s military
modernization for several years in annual military reports that
China routinely denounces as being provocative and exaggerated.

This year’s report praised China’s globally oriented
diplomacy but said its leaders had yet to explain the purposes
of its military expansion and criticized its lack of
transparency.