Just in time for Christmas, the U.S. Pentagon finally released its Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025, commonly known as the 2025 China Military Power Report, barely fulfilling an annual obligation that dates back to 2000.

Given that the U.S. Senate already passed the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act on December 17, 2025, the delayed publication of the report also suggests, to some extent, that the Pentagon's budgetary response to what Washington perceives as the China threat will be a full year behind the curve.

This rushed, last-minute submission has drawn public criticism on both sides of the Pacific. Many Americans see it as a slapdash effort: It lacks a table of contents, the cover still reads "Department of Defense" rather than the newly adopted "Department of War," and much of the content is recycled from the 2024 edition.

From the Chinese perspective, the report is riddled with contradictions. In addition to highlighting China's warhead count, it deploys loaded terms such as "historic expansion" to conjure up speculative scenarios about China's military development, all in service of constructing a narrative of an ever-encroaching "China threat." China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has responded by arguing that Washington's alarmism is designed to furnish a pretext for accelerating its own nuclear modernization while undermining global strategic stability. The U.S. is planning to spend $1.7 trillion over the next three decades to overhaul and upgrade its nuclear arsenal. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, global spending on upgrading and expanding nuclear weapons exceeded $100 billion in 2024, and the U.S. accounted for more than half of that total at $56.8 billion.

At the same time, the report asserts that China-U.S. relations are on the mend, and that the American military will prioritize strategic stability, conflict management and de-escalation by expanding channels of communication with the People's Liberation Army of China. Yet a string of recent U.S. actions lays bare this very contradiction: Washington continues signaling goodwill about easing tensions with Beijing, while simultaneously pushing the envelope on arms sales to Taiwan and exports of offensive weaponry to its Asia-Pacific allies. The U.S. has just approved its largest-ever arms package to Taiwan, including offensive systems such as HIMARS rocket launchers, a clear continuation of interference in China's internal affairs and a provocation on the Taiwan question, the red line in China-U.S. relations.

For the U.S. today, the most urgent priority may be to define a clearer role for its international strategy. The Donald Trump administration is unmistakably pursuing a policy of global retrenchment, seeking to shore up strength at home while pivoting toward Latin American affairs and steering clear of multi-front confrontations around the world. This looks less like a deliberate stepping back than a concession to reality: American power can no longer sustain the ambition of upholding global hegemony. A report released on December 19, 2025, by the Department of War Office of Inspector General revealed that F-35 fighters operated by the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps "were unable to fly half the time in 2024." In recent years, the average mission-capable rate for the U.S. military's F-35 fleet has fallen to around 55 percent, consistently falling short of the Pentagon's 67-percent minimum threshold. Military Watch Magazine predicts that as the fleet ages and maintenance demands mount, the F-35's mission-capable rate could plummet further still—possibly to around 35 percent. This not only hobbles U.S. combat readiness but also has direct repercussions for American allies that have ordered or already fielded the stealth fighter.

American strategic retrenchment is inevitable, but excessive anxiety over China's development is no wiser. China's military growth has been an unavoidable response to the external pressure created by Washington's earlier pursuit of "absolute security" and its global military interventionism. China has neither the desire nor the need to engage in a full-scale, ruinously expensive arms race with the U.S. The objectives of China's defense modernization are clear and circumscribed: to ensure that China cannot be coerced on the question of national reunification, and that its core development interests are not infringed. So long as the U.S. genuinely respects China's core interests, especially by ending its provocations and armed interference on the Taiwan question, a military conflict between the two countries is neither necessary nor inevitable.

China has been iterating that the Pacific is vast enough for two major countries. But the key to avoiding conflict does not lie in unilateral restraint on China's part—it hinges on whether the U.S. can truly abandon its zero-sum, Cold War mentality.

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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