COMRADES IN ARMS: Chinese and U.S. Marine Corps soldiers congratulate each other after a successful joint drill in south China' Zhanjiang in November 2006 (ZHA CHUNMING)

China's unprecedented industrial growth over the last two decades has raised the question of whether it now poses a threat to the security of the United States economically, militarily, or both. Economically, the extent to which China truly threatens the United States depends at least in part on the chauvinistic assumption that any potential challenge to absolute U.S. global economic dominance is threatening.

On the military question, the answer is much clearer. When it comes to the putative Chinese military threat, the numbers simply don't add up.

Crunching the numbers

Much has been made of the double-digit increase in Chinese defense spending over the last three years. China has indeed increased its spending. The estimate of China's military expenditures for 2006 is $35 billion. That is about 7 percent of the U.S. defense budget, once the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are factored in. Even before including these latter expenditures, the U.S. military budget is now larger than the defense budgets of all other nations combined. Almost surely China's actual military expenditures are larger than the 2006 estimate. But even if the military budget is twice as large, $70 billion is still less than 15 percent of the U.S. total and less than what was spent in Iraq and Afghanistan last year alone.

In terms of ground forces, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has an active duty component of 2.3 million personnel. That's a lot of soldiers, but the United States has 1.4 million, with less than one fourth of the population. Moreover, despite the supply breakdown scandal in Iraq, the 1.4 million U.S. troops are much better equipped overall than their Chinese counterparts, few of whom have state-of-the-art support materiel or personal safety equipment.

The PLA's air force capabilities, meanwhile, are no match in quality for the United States either defensively or offensively. Many of China's aircraft models are over 40 years old.

China's weakest link is naval. It has no blue ocean navy. Of the 21 large aircraft carriers operational in the world right now, 12 are American, with a total landing space of 75 acres. The carriers belonging to the rest of the world have 15 acres altogether. None of the other aircraft carriers belongs to China. So, the score is rather lopsided on the naval front: the United States 12, China 0.

The Chinese might have a hard time "expanding their influence far out into the Pacific" because so many U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force personnel are already stationed in the region. There are 18,000 troops stationed in Alaska, 60,000 in Hawaii, 37,000 in Japan, 5,000 on Guam, and 30,000 in South Korea. Again, the Chinese number is zero. The United States has over 700 military installations outside its borders overall, while the Chinese have none at present.

Who fears whom?

It should thus be clear that the Chinese have much better grounds for fearing the United States than the other way around, and this holds true not only in terms of actual military capabilities, but also in the readiness and willingness to use them. Unlike the United States, which has well over a quarter of a million troops stationed overseas with attendant army, naval and air force weapons and delivery systems equal to the rest of the world together, the entire Chinese army, navy and air force are based within its own borders, and shooting at no one.

Without future U.S. provocation, the Chinese will not likely try to match the United States militarily as the former Soviet Union did. First, the costs would be prohibitive. Building a blue ocean navy, for example, would require not only the construction and deployment of aircraft carriers, but escorts and supply ships for them, and other ships for other purposes. This new navy would have to be very large and active in the Indian Ocean and in the Pacific in order to keep sea lanes secure for oil deliveries necessary for the economy. It would necessitate increasing significantly the number of airplanes built and deployed, fighters and bombers alike.

Even if the Chinese economy could absorb the costs of building and maintaining such an expanded navy, however, it would be fairly ineffective without many overseas bases to refuel and resupply the fleet(s), and the Chinese Government would be extremely reluctant to seek such bases. In terms of physical size, demographics and industrial output, China dwarfs Southeast Asian countries on or near its borders. It has been actively engaged since the beginning of the century in forming trade and other agreements with ASEAN not only to play down its Goliath image but also to develop markets closer to home in order to avoid dependency on the U.S. market, cut transportation costs, and reduce military expenditures. It is in China's best interest to form closer ties with South Korea and Japan as well.