A Chinese spokesman said in Washington Monday that two recent reports to the US Congress blowing up the "China threat" theory were groundless and harmful to the Sino-US relations.
Chinese Embassy spokesman Xie Feng said the two reports issued in the last 10 days, one by the Pentagon and the other by the Sino-US Security Review Commission, "are not true to facts."
Xie pointed out that China's defense budget is the lowest among all the major countries in the world. "It's about one-nineteenth of the United States and half of Japan. So I don't think militarily China poses any threat to any country," he said at a news conference.
"China is a developing country with a relatively low GDP per capita. Our basic national policy right now is to continue concentrating on economic construction so as to further raise the living standard of our people," he said.
"Besides, China has a history of peace-loving. If you have studied Chinese culture, you will find that the essence of Chinese philosophy lies in peace and harmony," he said, noting that the map of China today is very similar to that in the Han dynasty, which was 2,000 years ago.
Concerning the Pentagon report which estimated that China's annual military spending is as high as US$65 billion, Xie said: "I have noticed that here in the United States, a group of Americans have been complaining loudly about the lack of transparency of Chinese military spending. So I just wonder through what ways and how do they come up with this US$65 billion?"
The so-call "China threat" theory is really not something new, Xie noted. Whenever Sino-US relations reaped some progress, then some people who cling to the Cold War mentality would come back and blow up this theory, he said.
"The threat to Sino-US relations and the threat to world peace do not lie in China, but rather in these people who have fabricated this China threat," he said.
(China Daily July 23, 2002)
