Return to site

china intentions :: essays research papers

broken image

 Osama bin Laden has done Communist China a favor. Because the minds of President Bush and congressional leaders are so concentrated on the war on terrorism, they have all but ignored Beijing's aggressive military buildup. A strong possibility exists that by focusing so closely on Iraq, a focus that is understandable considering how unsettled the situation is, the United States could miss developments that could affect its standing in the rest of the world.
Among the many uncertainties of the Asian security environment, none is more compelling than that surrounding the modernization program of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. For some observers, the combination of economic growth and force improvement signals Beijing's intention to establish regional supremacy. Others acknowledge that the PLA can spoil the United States' interests; however, Beijing's interest in regional stability, and the growing conventional capabilities of other regional powers, they tend to discount a PLA military threat. Chinese secrecy compounds the difficulty.