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

With an adjustment in its national strategy, China
followed a two-pronged approach to improve its
military power. On the one hand, China purchased
advanced battleships and fighter jets from Russia as
quick fixes for dealing with the Taiwan issue. On the
other hand, China made an all-out effort to embrace
the RMA and transform its military machine.
To China’s fortune, its growing economy provided
timely resources for these huge undertakings. Indeed,
as Ross and Monroe put it, China’s powerful economy
was fueling a credible military force. (See the quotes
from Ross and Monroe in the earlier section.) From
the mid-1990s to the present, China has topped the
world in spending the most amount to purchase advanced
conventional weapon systems abroad (mostly
from Russia, see the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute Yearbooks of Armaments, Disarmament,
and International Security for the records).
At the same time, China also evidently increased its
military spending to cover the other expenses of its
military transformation. However, this extraordinary
increase in defense spending did not seem to bother
the Chinese leaders—they, after all, had plenty in
their treasury. Indeed, as China’s economy expected
to have decades to grow before reaching its full capacity,
China can bear this burden; and China’s military
modernization will have bountiful funding for
its development. In this sense, China is more like the
United States when it was on its way to becoming a
great military power than the Soviet Union on its way
to bankruptcy.
The result of China’s efforts is clearly identifiable.
The Pentagon has documented the developments in
the growth of Chinese military power through its annual
report to the Congress since 2000. The following
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