Pentagon's China report smells moldy: China Daily editorial

The so-called 2023 China Military Power Report that greatly exaggerates China's military power, which the US Department of Defense submitted to Congress last week, is nothing but a stage prop the US military has been using every year to lobby lawmakers to raise the defense budget for the coming year.

Had, as the US Department of Defense claims, the report really been "an authoritative assessment" of the Chinese military, China would have been interested in perusing it to see how its military power is analyzed by the US, because constructive security and military exchanges between the two sides are of paramount significance to world peace and stability.

However, despite making remarkable achievements in technology, organization and intelligence over the years, the US military does not seem to have made any progress in its reporting quality, as evidenced from the content of the report it has been issuing since 2000.

As China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said, the report, like the ones before, ignores facts, is full of prejudice, and hypes up the "China threat" theory to achieve the narrow ends of the Pentagon to defend the US' global hegemony.

The report is basically an awkward compilation of publicly available information, including unsourced media reports, into a hodgepodge to not only solicit more money from the Treasury through Congress, but also trick, if not coerce, some US allies into buying US weapons to counter or guard against the "China threat".

By using unverified information to prove its default conclusion — that China is a "threat" to the "rules-based order" — the Pentagon is trying to hide a plain truth: it is the US, with the strongest military, its shameless "America first" policy and moldy Cold War mentality, that has been threatening global peace and stability.

Be it the Russia-Ukraine conflict or the Israel-Palestine conflict, or the escalating tensions in the South China Sea and on the Korean Peninsula, or the worsening situations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the US is responsible for all of them.

Whether the US' hegemony and interests can be maintained is the major criterion the Pentagon uses to define "rules".

In stark contrast, the Chinese military has always followed a defensive national defense policy. It is the US military that comes halfway around the world to China's doorsteps to interfere in China's internal affairs across the Taiwan Strait. The US has also been taking advantage of China's maritime disputes with some countries in the region to try and drive a wedge between China and its neighbors, and coax them to confront Beijing.

As long as the US has an axe to grind, the Pentagon's China report will continue to be a proof of the US being a source of trouble for the world.