I do know that this is a very old article but I must add this comment so you can realize how big of a threat china really is. First off China has the largest military in the world with 2,255,000 active troops and 800,000 reserve personnel, and 3,969,000 paramilitary personnel that is a total of 7,024,000 personnel. I did not fully read your article but you said something about china only spending 35 billion on there military per year which what you did say is a large increase but is not near the united states which spends around 500 billion, but then again the U.S. department of national estimates that they spend around 105 billion and if you were to compare that to what they can buy with that kind of money compared to what the united states could buy with that kind of money it would but them up to around spending 450 billion which is very very close to what the U.S. military spends. Also another point i would like to add is the Chinese economy has been grown 9.6 percent for the past 25 years compared to the world which has been growing at 2.6 percent, if china keeps growing at this rate just think of what they will be capable of in years to come.