China's military — more bark than bite

China has invested billions of dollars in its armed forces and is developing advanced fighters and missiles, considering building its first aircraft carrier and is trying to slim its bloated ranks down to a lean, high-tech military.

The 2010 defense budget unveiled last week was 7.5 percent higher than last year, a modest rise by China's recent standards, but impressive compared to other big powers.

Those rises have raised alarm in Taiwan, the self-ruled island China claims as its own, the rest of the region, and especially in the United States, the world's only superpower with a military reach that far exceeds China's.

In a report to Congress published last month, the Pentagon said it was concerned by China's missile buildup and increasingly advanced capabilities in the Pacific region.

Yet while China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) looks increasingly fierce on paper, analysts — and even Chinese army officers — say it will be a long time before the country has the means to effectively challenge U.S. power, if ever.

“What is their readiness level? How effective are these things they've developed themselves?” said Drew Thompson, of the Nixon Center, a think tank in Washington.

“Is their indigenous technology really working, or does it simply exist like a lot of things in the Chinese system, on paper? I would posit it probably leans more towards the latter.”

After a spike in tension that has stoked nationalist Chinese calls for a hard shove back against U.S. influence, some PLA officers are also trying to discourage chest-thumping.

“There's no way China can threaten the United States,” Lt. Gen. Li Dianren, a professor at the National Defense University, told Reuters on the sidelines of the annual session of parliament.

“Anyone with even a bit of common sense knows that our capabilities do not come even close to matching those of the U.S. In terms of economics, technology and the military, the gap is huge. How can we threaten them?” he added.

To be sure, China's military is becoming increasingly assertive, as seen by occasional tiffs at sea and in the air, notably in 2001 when a U.S. spy plane made an emergency landing on Hainan island after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet.

Last March, the Pentagon said five Chinese ships harassed the U.S. Navy ship the Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, in international waters off Hainan. China says the U.S. ship was carrying out an illegal survey.

PLA showmanship is also grand.

A military parade last Oct. 1 marking 60 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China featured an array of new weapons, all domestically developed.

“China and the United States are rivals. That's a fact,” said Liu Mingfu, author of a book calling for China to develop a military so powerful Washington will not dare challenge it.

“In the past, U.S. presidents didn't call China a rival, and Chinese presidents never have. But that's strategic hypocrisy, because each side knows the other is a rival,” he said.

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