China Ramping Up Their Military Budget Signals a New Era of Global Power Plays

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

While we're still all enjoying the triumphant tone of President Trump's Tuesday night speech to Congress and enjoying the Democrats' discomfiture and their ongoing meltdowns, we should caution the Trump administration not to take their eyes off a couple of other balls. A primary concern remains China. President Trump, however, only mentioned China, America's primary geopolitical rival, in the context of tariffs and trade. But the People's Republic has ambitions. Those ambitions run counter to ours, and they aren't all about trade.

On Wednesday, only hours after President Trump's triumphant speech, China announced a major increase in their "defense" spending.

China said Wednesday it will increase its defense budget 7.2% this year, as it continues its campaign to build a larger, more modern military to assert its territorial claims and challenge the U.S. defense lead in Asia.

China’s military spending remains the second largest behind the U.S. and it already has the world’s largest navy.

The budget, which adds up to about $245 billion, was announced at the National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of China’s legislature. The Pentagon and many experts say China’s total spending on defense may be 40% higher or more because of items included under other budgets.

The boost is the same percentage as last year, far below the double-digit percentage increases of previous years and reflecting an overall slowdown in the economy. The nation’s leaders have set a target of around 5% growth for this year.

Note the scare quotes in my writing above around "defense." It isn't defense that China is building up to. We should bear that firmly in mind. China is building a sword, not a shield.

China's leader, Chairman Xi Jinping, has amassed more personal power in the nation than anyone since Chairman Mao. It's pretty clear to anyone watching China under his leadership that he intends to see the Middle Kingdom supplant the United States as the primary global power, not only in the Pacific but globally. And the thing is this: Unlike at any other time in its history, China does not have the luxury of time.

Asian societies, in general, view history in very different terms than we Americans do. I've spent a lot of time in Japan, and like China, this is a society that reflects on their history not in hundreds of years but in the thousands. China is, as I have written many times, a land not of great ideas but of great momentum, and Chairman Xi seems determined to direct that momentum toward making China a global power.

But the Middle Kingdom is poised on the edge of a demographic cliff. Young Chinese people are not marrying, they are not having children, and the numbers of young men of military service age, while still considerable - there's that great momentum again - are declining. Chairman Xi surely knows that China has a generation, perhaps two, to achieve what he intends - to surpass the United States. His plans and intentions have recently run into another stumbling block when the feckless, corrupt, incompetent Joe Biden was replaced by Donald Trump, who placed our military under the direction of a former field-grade Army officer, the archetype of the "high-speed, low-drag Major," Pete Hegseth, who intends to place the command of the branches of the U.S. armed services back in the hands of warfighters.

Nations on the edge of a crisis have not, historically, reacted rationally. China's government, the Chinese Communist Party, is ramping up defense spending. They are building ships. They are training soldiers. They are becoming increasingly bellicose in the Western Pacific.

And they are running out of time.