China military hike must be seen in context

China’s announcement of sharply higher spending on its military budget is not in itself cause for alarm. The new Bush administration’s reaction to it, however, is another story.

The scariest thing about the possibility of military confrontation with China is the phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy: the likelihood that overly overt and assiduous preparation for it makes it inevitable.

It’s quickly becoming clear that President Bush is making a clear departure from President Clinton’s tendency, while downplaying serious concerns about human rights abuses, weapons proliferation and trading practices, toward accommodation with the remaining communist nations. Bush’s all but rude rejection of visiting South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s "sunshine policy" toward North Korea was a startling indication that things will be different.

This tendency also appears in the unnecessarily alarming tone, presumably a reflection of Bush officials’ comments, of American news reports about the Chinese military budget hike.

The Chinese spending increase, however, largely follows trends that have been cooking for many months now. According to East-West Center experts, they include an effort to bring pay for the People’s Liberation Army’s officer corps into line with recent raises for civil servants, a long-standing desire for modernization and payback for — on paper, at least — the PLA’s "surrendering its vast business empire to government authorities a year ago."

What also should not be surprising is Beijing’s determination to make good on its threat to meet an American go-ahead on national missile defense with expansion of its own intercontinental ballistic missile fleet. It is clear that China would not do this absent Bush’s insistence on NMD development.

We appear to be witnessing early and unwelcome signs of renewal of a war we thought we had won — the Cold War.

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