Good questions.

China also is improving its ability to project power, and developing advanced systems of military technology," he said. "Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust deployments?

Donald Rumsfeld
U.S. Secretary of Defense
June 4, 2005
Quoted by Bill Gertz.

My guess is: to ensure that no hostile power will dare to take over Middle East oil fields and cut China off from oil.

Many years ago when the Republicans were a minority in the U.S. Senate, the minority staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee published a study arguing that China was attempting to cut a swath west through the Middle East and N. Africa by forming alliances with Arab states and Iran. China's supplying Iran with antiship missiles and her tolerance or outright encouragement of the N. Koreans' supplying of missiles to the Middle East powers ("We've asked those Koreans again and again to stop with the missile exports, already, but, nooooo, will "Mr. Juche" Kim Jong-il listen to us?") are consistent with this strategy of ensuring friendly oil suppliers and maximizing the difficulties of the U.S.

Simply ensuring the security of the state is a rational goal of any government. If China is still secretly torqued about the Opium Wars then that might explain their generally "dog in the manger" Middle East policies that go beyond mere security.

China turns its anger about the Republic of China off and on ad libitem and the issue is generally bogus in The Colonel's opinion. China invaded Tibet and got away with it. And expects the rest of the world to accept this military reality. Any outrage over someone else's ensuring (by the same means) the independence of another piece of territory claimed by China is hypocritical.

The fact that China still has a Stalinist government may explain an excessive military buildup. China's no doubt way beyond the madness of backyard furnaces and the Red Guard frenzy, but the 20th century was stark proof of the power of idealogues to dispatch millions of people on the basis of intellectual fantasies unrestrained by free elections.

Und zen zer iss ze kweschun of Lebensraum.

China is rumored to have a large population and moving some of it into (oil-rich) Siberia and (oil-rich) Central Asia maybe doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Having a gaggle of missiles to discourage corrective measures would surely be handy.

This particular point doesn't seem to bother the Russians overly in the short term as we've seen a report that makes them out as cooperating with the Chinese and Indians as a counterweight to massive U.S. efforts to impose (1) Halloween and (2) jitterbugging on the rest of the world.

In that the Russians seem shortsighted.

And Col. Bunny, Ace Strategic Thinker, sure as shootin' hopes we're not ending up crosswise with the Indians in our fervor to curry favor with Pakistan in our War Against "Terror [i.e., gooney bird Islam (GBI)]."

Why, when you come down to it, are we favoring the Chinese with so much investment when the Indians seem just as technically adept -- and a whole lot friendlier?

What geniuses at Wally World and Toys R Us managed to bring about the current master plan of massive transfer of U.S. cash to China to help them with this military buildup?