HONG KONG -- One figure that emerged from the current session of the National People's Congress in Beijing has intrigued China-watchers -- the 9.6 percent scheduled growth in defense spending this year, far less than the 17.6 percent increase of last year.
"The fact that defense-spending growth is below double digits shows that the Chinese are not that worried about encirclement" by the United States, an American Sinologist said. "The single-digit defense number shows that the Chinese are more relaxed (about its military capability) and not as worried about the U.S. targeting them as at the beginning of the Bush administration."
There is general agreement that Sino-American relations today are the best they have been since the Tiananmen Square military crackdown in 1989. However, in the long run, serious problems are bound to emerge as the interests of the two countries diverge. China is a rising power whose emergence threatens the pre-eminent status of the U.S.