T he official Chinese white paper outlining China's projections for its military has suggests amusingly that China has no intentions of starting an arms race. They might be right - going by their unbelievably high military expenditure, they're too far ahead for a race to even exist! "The paper suggests that China does not want to develop the kind of power projection capability that would match the US in the long term," said Li Mingjiang, from the Singapore Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies. The paper also hilariously defends the rise in China's defense expenditure, officially projected to be some $36 billion in 2006 (up 15% from previous year), "This increase is to compensate for topping up basic defense weaknesses!" Now, the Federation of American Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council have jointly suggested that the US could use this to justify its own weapon programmes.
Though the consequences are not too appealing, at least China offers the world a hope of the emergence of a multi-polar world. Well, America has attacked more countries than China in recent history. On the other hand, China has lifted more people out of poverty than ever done in the history of mankind by any country. We've already made the choice.