Pentagon report hyping up 'China threat' deceptive, hypocritical scaremongering: China Daily editorial

The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence constitute an unequivocal and effective code of conduct for all countries to follow in promoting the spirit of international rule of law and finding the right way to get along with each other.

These principles have been written into China's Constitution, and, as it forges ahead on its modernization journey, China continues to champion these principles as the framework for a community with a shared future for humanity.

However, to sustain its global hegemony and oil its lucrative arms industry, the United States needs to create enemies, and China has become the most recent country to be subject to a fabricated adversarial narrative. This is fully evident in the Pentagon's latest report on China's military and security development released last week.

The document is filled with nothing but bias, misperceptions and alarmist talk, all of which desperately slander the Chinese military and exaggerate the so-called military threat posed by China, as a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Defense said on Saturday.

The US has at least 750 military bases in 80 countries so that it can enforce its will around the world by means of force. Yet it has no compunction about promoting what Defense Ministry spokesman Zhang Xiaogang rightly lambasted as "highly deceptive and hypocritical reports" featuring "exaggerated and sensationalized rhetoric" intended to provide the US with an "excuse for its own military development and to mislead public opinion".

The US has a long and well-documented history of leveraging its military strength to start wars, prolong conflicts, and impose regime changes, leaving chaos and severe humanitarian disasters in its wake, the spokesperson said.

Indeed, one can randomly pick any troubled spot around the world and somewhere on the timeline of its unfolding, the US will in all likelihood be found to have done some devil-made work.

Before pointing an accusing finger at China's military, the US should clarify why it needs so many US military boots tramping around the world and why it needs to keep such a huge nuclear arsenal.

Worse, the US not only adheres to a first-use nuclear weapons policy, it is also quickening its steps in developing new types of nuclear weapons and has adjusted its strategy for their use. It is also enabling the proliferation of nuclear weapons by transferring the needed technology and materials to its allies, most obviously in the case of its trilateral grouping with Australia and the United Kingdom.

China has repeatedly affirmed its military modernization is defensive in nature and aimed at safeguarding its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and that it is committed to maintaining world peace and stability. Its defense buildup and defense budget increase are commensurate with its economic development and cater to its national defense and security needs.

But the US has an insatiable military-industrial complex whose appetite demands constant feeding. It accounts for about 15 percent of all federal spending and half of the discretionary spending, leaving tough decisions to be made about how the other half should be split between such things as education, transportation and health.

It was by no means an exaggeration for the Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman to call the US "war-addicted". Like any junkie it has no qualms about how low it has to stoop to get its next fix. Hence, China has become the subject of the Pentagon's "pacing" patter.

Despite what the Pentagon report would have people believe, it is the US, with its increasingly unconstrained roguish behavior, that is the biggest threat to global stability.

Not content with its recent machinations in Europe and the Middle East, the US also has its conflict-triggering sights set on Asia where it is usurping the regional maritime disputes to stir up trouble in the South China Sea and ramping up its interference in the Taiwan question by using "force to support independence", as China's Foreign Ministry said after the White House approved another arms sale to Taipei. It is also pushing for its regional allies to extend the aggressive posture of NATO into the region.

The US should stop peddling its military-budget bloating "China threat" theory as Gospel brought down on tablets from Capitol Hill and instead strive to value, inherit and promote the principles of peaceful coexistence. All it serves to do with its hyping up of a "China threat" is to show that the more things change, the more it will remain the same.