Threat From China Is Being Hyped

Threat From China Is Being Hyped
By Ivan Eland | http://original.antiwar.com/eland/2013/06/04/threat-from-china-is-being-hyped/#.Ua9OP8AGTnE.gmail
June 4, 2013
Articles in the American media usually portray China as a potential adversary, and recent press coverage is no exception. Stories have appeared about China’s military hacking into the computer systems of the American government and business and Chinese oil companies’ reaping of unfair gains in Iraq on the backs of dead American soldiers. Yet the threat from China in the popular American mind instilled by such articles is overblown.
Undoubtedly, the U.S. military and intelligence services also attempt to hack into Chinese computer systems; this unseemly fact is glossed over by the usually nationalist American media. Even if Chinese military espionage is taken in isolation, it indicates that the Chinese realize a technological gap exists between China and the West and that they are having trouble developing technologies themselves. Similarly, the same conclusions could be reached about the much-ballyhooed Chinese purchase of Russian military equipment. In contrast, the United States develops its own military technologies, and they are the best in the world.