To anyone who has been following stories about China for a while this should come as no surprise. A hot or cold war will be fought with China during my lifetime. Read any of the Pentagon’s annual reports to Congress on China (the 2005 one in particular) and you will see that China is making plans for a confrontation with the US. Their military is focussing on anti-guerrilla warfare (make things more difficult for SOCOM), anti-stealth (no more month-long, pre-invasion bombing campaigns), and anti-helicopter (workhorse of our military) tactics/technology.

They are exerting influence all over the world, from Mongolia to Madagascar to South America (I think I heard a Chinese company handles security for the Panama canal). Obviously this is not something we have the luxury of dealing with or even worrying about right now, but it is something we need to be prepared to deal with in the not-too-distant future.

Given our massive trade deficit with China, as well as our going-out-of-business export of capital to that nation, I’m far less concerned about their submarines than I am about whether or not they will have to built ours in the near future. Does anyone else see the irony in this?

We should also be concerned about the fact China is buying so many US bonds. Not only is interest going from out of the country, but it eliminates our Anti-China foreign policy because our govt needs the bond buying to stay afloat. As Social Security and Medicare expenses grow, we will become friendlier to China.