China’s a superpower — deal with it

China announced on Sunday that it planned to increase its military spending by 18 percent in 2007 to a record $45 billion, making it the world’s second largest military spender, behind only the United States.

In comparative terms, China’s military budget is equivalent to about 8 percent of the U.S. military’s 2007 budget of $533 billion, but the announcement has made headlines left and right.

The U.S. government’s response to the announcement was tepid and lacked assertiveness.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was in China at the time of the announcement and asked that China’s military increase its communication with the U.S. government “so that we have a bit better understanding of exactly what it is that the government of China has in mind with respect to its military modernization.”

Perhaps it was best that the U.S. government’s response was said quietly.

In 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney answered one senator’s question regarding China’s increased military spending by saying he had been closely “monitoring China’s entrance into the civilized world.”

More constructive remarks came from Virginia’s freshman Sen. Jim Webb last Tuesday when he questioned Pentagon officials during a Senate hearing about whether cost of labor differences had been taken into account when comparing the relative impact of Chinese vs. U.S. military expenditure.

Webb’s question is important, and if he had researched what China’s recent military expenditures were used to purchase, he may have felt less threatened. The Chinese military has recently downsized in terms of manpower, lowering its advantage in terms of Webb’s noted cheap labor factor.

China is decreasing the size of its army so that its remaining soldiers can train using more advanced weapons and the Chinese military can focus on building high-tech weapon systems.

For example, China recently tested its first anti-satellite weapon, making it only the third known nation in the world to possess such a weapon.

It is widely assumed, however, that China has very limited power projection.

In other words, Chinese troops cannot easily be deployed outside of China’s immediate border because the Chinese military lacks the cargo airplanes, long-range bombers and ships to deploy its military in countries far away.

However, China’s military was able to send troops to Darfur, Sudan to protect Chinese-owned oil fields run by the state-controlled China National Petroleum Corporation, and in doing so provided a perfect example of China’s lack of interest in respecting human rights.

Chinese officials simply may not be concerned over their military power in a world that seems more and more determined by economic power rather than military might.

In today’s world, China has focused its efforts on building friends around the world — especially in Africa and Central Asia, regions rich in natural resources.

Unfortunately, China isn’t very picky about who it befriends and has recently supplied weapons to the genocidal Sudanese regime, Robert Mugabe’s oppressive Zimbabwean government and Iran.

The U.S. government should not make a big deal out of the nominal spending budget of the Chinese military, but should increase pressure on China to stop helping support dictatorial and human rights-violating regimes.

It only looks hypocritical for the United States to accuse China of spending too much on their military, when the U.S. government spends more than 10 times what the Chinese do and continues to increase its military budget every year.