Beijing: Washington’s view that China’s increasingly advanced weaponry could undermine US military power in the Pacific were “groundless and irresponsible,” China’s defence ministry said Thursday.
“China’s military development is always a positive factor for both regional and global peace and stability,” Hu Changming, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defence, was quoted as saying by official news agency Xinhua.
Hu’s comments were made in response to a speech by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who said Wednesday US naval carriers and air bases in the Pacific faced new threats from China’s modernisation.
“In fact, when considering the military-modernisation programs of countries like China, we should be concerned less with their potential ability to challenge the US symmetrically — fighter to fighter or ship to ship — and more with their ability to disrupt our freedom of movement and narrow our strategic options,” Gates said in a speech to the Air Force Association.
Gates speech followed Tuesday’s release of the 2009 National Intelligence Strategy document, in which China’s “natural resource-focused diplomacy and military modernisation” were cited as factors making it a “global challenge.”
Hu said in a statement reported by Xinhua that China had “always pursued a national defence policy that is defensive in nature and unswervingly follows a road of peaceful development.”
“We demand the US side to respect (this) fact, take measures to correct the wrong comments and stop doing things that undermine the military relations between the two countries,” Hu was quoted as saying.
