The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

no substitute for the efforts to win the hearts and souls
of the people in those two regions. Political reform is
eventually in order. 220 In this respect, China should
welcome U.S. assistance rather than rejecting it.
The United States needs to take two things into account.
One is to hold a fine line between concern for
human rights violations and support for separatists
movements. The other is to take an unassuming approach
to work with the Chinese government on the
human rights issues. The Australian experience with
the Chinese government can be useful. 221
On China’s Military Power. Of all the expanding elements
of China’s comprehensive national power, none
is more of concern to the United States than China’s
military power. Will China’s military power catch up
with that of the United States? What should China and
the United States do in a peer competition, if not collision,
of these two mighty military machines?
The answer to the first question is straightforward.
China has the capacity for its military to become a
peer competitor to the U.S. military. All China needs
are motivation, smart policies, resources, and time to
bring about its military’s potentials. The United States
inadvertently provided China with the motivations
in the 1990s. One was a wakeup call to the Chinese
with the U.S.-led revolution in military affairs (RMA),
which gave rise to an innovative fighting power that
was put on a full play during the Gulf War I of 1991
against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the
Kosovo air campaign of 1999. Chinese leaders were
shocked to see how much the U.S. military power had
advanced. They had long regretted that China missed
several RMA’s in the past (e.g., the transitions from
“cold-weapon warfare” with the use of mainly knives
to “hot-weapon warfare” with the application of fire-
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