March 5,
2008: China is increasing its defense spending this year to $57 billion, a 17.6
percent increase from last year. The U.S. Department of Defense insists that
China only publicly acknowledges as little as a third of its actual defense
spending. But even using the worst case estimate, U.S. defense spending is
still nearly three times as much as Chinas.
This sort
of thing can get complicated, but one thing that is certain is Chinese military
growth and modernization. Especially modernization. While China is a police
state, it also has a market economy which makes it difficult to keep people
from wandering all over the place with cell phone cameras. Then there's the
Internet, where those digital photos of new military gear quickly appear.
Finally, there are Internet resources like Google Earth, which make it
difficult for any military organization to hide things, especially large things
(like warships and large quantities of tanks or aircraft).
Whatever
the Chinese are up to, it involves lots of new ICBMs, nuclear submarines and
modern jet fighters. Oh, the Pentagon recently came out and said that China was
responsible for the large number of hacker attacks on military and government
networks, in the United States and elsewhere in the West, last year.
Something's
up, besides Chinese defense spending, and no one but China knows exactly what
it is.
