US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Saturday in Singapore China has
every right to decide how to invest its resources (into the military), but urged
China to explain its increased military spending to the world.
Speaking at an international security conference in Singapore, Rumsfeld said
that the rest of the world also needed to understand Beijing's intentions,
saying it was in its interest to "demystify" actions that others find worrying.
U.S. Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld speaks during the Asia Security Summit in
Singapore June 3, 2006. [Reuters] |
"The only
issue on transparency is that China would benefit by demystifying the reasons
why they are investing what they are investing in, in my view," Rumsfeld said.
A Pentagon report last month said China was spending two to three times more
on a major military buildup than the US$35 billion a year it has publicly
acknowledged.
The report concluded that while Taiwan appears to be the near-term focus of
China's military spending, the buildup poses a potential threat to the United
States over the longer term.
China strongly resented, and firmly disagreed with, the Pentagon report,
saying the reported is based on "Cold-War mentality," Chinese Foreign
Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a press conference on May 24 in Beijing.
By spreading the "China threat" theory, the report has seriously violated
principles governing international relations and intervened in China's internal
affairs, he said. Liu noted that China is a peace-loving country and adopts a
national defence policy of a defensive nature.
"It is universally recognized that China is an important force in promoting
peace in the Asia Pacific and the world at large," Liu said.
At the Singapore meeting this year, Rumsfeld did not put emphasis on the US
view of China as a potential threat or future military rival either in his
speech or in a question and answer session with defense and security officials
and experts attending the so-called Shangri-la Dialogue.
He said he thought China's first choice was a peaceful reunification of
Taiwan with the mainland. But, he argued that as China's stake in the global
economy grows it will face pressure to explain its behavior to the outside
world.
"In life you can't have it both ways," Rumsfeld said.
"You can't be successful economically and engage the rest of the world, and
have people milling around your country and selling things and buying things and
engaging in exchanges, and have them at the same time worried or wondering about
some mystery that they see as to a behavior that is unsettling," he said.
"If the rest of the world looks at China and sees a behavior pattern that is
mysterious and potentially threatening, it tends to affect the willingness to
invest," he said.
China's expenditure on national defence totalled 244.6 billion yuan (US$30.5
billion) last year, about 7 per cent of the US defence budget. The US' military
expenditure per capita is 60 times that of China's, according to official
statistics.
