China's Military Growing in Strength and Anti-American Sentiment

The Chinese and United States militaries engaged in their first conversations this past Monday, since last winter when talks had been suspended. Defense secretaries Robert Gates (U.S.) and Liang Guanglie (China) met in Vietnam in order to prevent what they referred to as “mistrust, miscalculations and mistakes.” However, days before the meeting Liang Guanglie (China) was participating in the first war games with the Australian navy in which he told the Australian press that the Americans were not invited. He went on to say, in broken english, that they would not likely be invited until “the United States stops selling the weapons to Taiwan and stopping spying us with the air or the surface.” Although this could just be seen as political talk, the Pentagon is very worried about the United State's relations to China in the future. The last time the Chinese and American militaries found common ground was in at the end of the cold war when they both had the Soviet Union as a common enemy. However, this new generation of chinese military officers has only known and been taught anit-American ideology since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 which set relations back, and has set the stage for many of the problems today. China's military is expanding and although not yet capable to fight a more able United States military, they are starting to challenage the American dominance in the Pacific. It didn't help matters when President Obama met with the Tibetan religious leader, The Dali Lama, earlier this year and approved a $6.7 billion arms sale to Taiwan. China regards Taiwan as its territory and therefore does not like the United States recognizing Taiwan as a state. This reinforced the anti-American feelings of the younger Chinese military officers, and is setting the stage for what could possibly be a very difficult conlfict in the future. Although, these two countries depend on each other for trade and economics, the same does not ring true militatily. It is going to take major changes on both sides for the militaries of the U.S. and China to work together, and find common ground. If the status quo stays the same, anit-American sentiment will remain among China's military as they go into the future, which could create major conflicts in the years to come.

For more information read the article on the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/world/asia/12beijing.html?ref=world

By: Colin Zimmerman