US should stop military build-up in Asia Pacific

BEIJING - Senior military officials of the United States and Japan confirmed on Thursday that the two countries were discussing the option of adding another X-band early-warning radar at the island nation's northern Shariki base to contain missile threats.

Though the US State Department promptly denied that the missile defense hardware is targeted against China, yet considering the US' persistently deliberate exaggeration of "China's military threat," the denial is at best a poor lie.

With intensive joint military drills and insidious arms deployment, the US moves to expand military presence in the Asia-Pacific are detrimental to regional peace and stability.

Right at the moment, when Tokyo is wrestling with Beijing over China's Diaoyu Islands and a number of other territorial disputes in the Asia-Pacific are still boiling, Washington's military build-up in the area would further fuel the already flaring antagonism.

It has become a tradition for the United States to identify an "enemy country". With the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, a rising China has appeared to be the next choice.

By driving wedges between China and its neighboring countries, the United States intends to undermine the conditions that could favor China's development, so as to keep its self-claimed leadership in the region unrivaled.

Washington is playing a double game by diplomatically welcoming China's rise on the world stage on one hand, and covertly curbing the latter's development on the other.

Beijing has been explicit in its commitment to peaceful development and insists on bilateral talks to solve territorial disputes with its neighbors. A peaceful neighborhood is in China's own interests.

The US politicians have to understand that the biggest enemy their country faces is not China's rise, which is inevitable. It is Washington's inability to co-exist and cooperate with an emerging power.

Washington should revise its false-hearted China policy, and keep good faith with the "stay-neutral" stance toward the regional territorial disputes.

If the United States allows its Cold-War thoughts unchecked, there is a real danger that those disputes could spiral out of control and the whole region be sucked into military confrontation.