The Chinese Military Threat
Communist China views the United States as its major adversary and is building an awesome military arsenal, with modern weapons, planes and missiles. China already has the world’s largest army (3 million men), 5,000 combat aircraft, and 300 nuclear warheads. The Chinese shopping list includes aircraft carriers, missile-equipped warships, nuclear attack submarines, fighter aircraft, and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple warheads.
China is capable of buying such costly, warlike luxuries only because of the U.S. cash that flows from the pockets of Americans, known as our trade deficit, which has been running about $40 billion a year for some years. That’s enough money to build up a military/nuclear force capable of threatening the United States, as well as dominating the Pacific.
China’s expansionist aspirations are no secret. Now that China has pocketed Hong Kong, China can turn its avaricious eyes on Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Guam, and even threaten the sailors of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. When China was harassing Taiwan during its election, General Chi of the People’s Liberation Army crudely commented about China’s ability to deliver a nuclear warhead on Los Angeles.
A classified Air Force report released in May 1997 warned that China’s effort to build an advanced ICBM capability is “steadily increasing.” The report stated that this missile “will be a significant threat not only to U.S. forces deployed in the Pacific theater, but to portions of the continental United States and to many of our allies.”
China is determined not only to become a nuclear superpower but also a world-class industrial power, and the Communist bosses expect slave labor, theft, and U.S. folly to help them achieve those goals. They require a transfer of U.S. high technology as part of every business deal so that, in the next round, they expect to manufacture the goods without U.S. help and become a major exporter of cars, chemicals, steel, electronics, and aircraft. China has made several spectacular deals, which pretended to be merely commercial, but will vastly expand China’s military and industrial espionage and subversive capabilities.
The China Ocean Shipping Company (Cosco), a 600-ship global shipping company controlled by the People’s Liberation Army, is trying hard to acquire a 20-year lease on the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Long Beach. Clinton personally lobbied for the Cosco deal at a White House meeting in September 1995. U.S. taxpayers recently spent $500 million to modernize this deep-water port at the epicenter of our defense research and production in southern California. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) is trying to amend the Defense Authorization bill to stop the deal from going through.