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World Tribune

China’s rise is posing serious challenges and its military buildup and international behavior could produce an “adversarial” relationship with the world, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said last week.

“After two centuries of perceived Western hegemony, China seems to be determined to flex its muscles,” Hayden said.

China and India will affect strategic planning, he said. “Competition for influence will characterize the relationships between China, India, Japan and other emerging powers,” Hayden said during a speech at Kansas State University.

“But China, a communist-led nuclear state that aspires to and will likely achieve great power status during this century, will be the focus of American attention in that region of the world.”

Hayden said there are differing views about China’s rise and its motivations. His view is that China is an economic competitor and increasingly becoming a “geopolitical” competitor.

“But China is not an inevitable enemy of the United States of America. There are good policy choices available to both Washington and Beijing that can keep us on the largely peaceful, constructive path that we've both been on now for about 40 years,” he said.

China’s military buildup is the most significant aspect of Beijing’s growth, Hayden said, noting that the PLA has integrated the U.S. conflict lessons learned in both Persian Gulf wars. “They've developed an integrated advanced weaponry into a modern military force,” he said.

The new Chinese military power could pose a risk to U.S. forces and interest in the region, and the military buildup is also about projecting the image of strength, he said.

“It sees an advanced military force as an essential element of great power status, and it is the intelligence community's view that any Chinese government, even a democratic one, would have similar nationalist goals.”

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By Richard Spencer in Beijing

One of the world's leading arms control experts has said that the Chinese have realised that their nuclear weaponry has fallen behind those of other major powers and might not survive a first strike.

Bates Gill, head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), said that as a result it was developing more flexible delivery systems, including from submarines, as well as the capacity to use multiple warheads.

"Among the major nuclear powers China stands out in its effort to modernise, expand and improve its nuclear weapons capability," he said at a conference in Beijing.

China's first nuclear test took place amid huge patriotic pride in 1964.

But Chairman Mao was famously ambiguous about such weapons, once calling them "paper tigers".

Its arsenal, estimated at between 100 and 200 warheads, is the smallest of the big powers – the United States, Russia, Britain and France. The US is currently updating its missiles and warheads.

China now has a stated policy of never using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear country and never as a "first strike". But Dr Gill said its static nuclear delivery system had left it vulnerable to a first strike.

A sea-based capability would "make it less likely that an adversary could wipe out the possibility of a response," he said.

The Telegraph disclosed last week that China is constructing a secret nuclear submarine base to bolster its capabilities in the Pacific.

Dr Gill said the advances China was making raised questions about whether it could be an active participant in future arms control or reduction talks.

His comments were notable for being presented alongside a spokesman for China's own arms control association, which is publishing the Chinese language version of Sipri's annual report.

Teng Jianqun, a former navy colonel in the People's Liberation Army, said the increase in military spending was partly a result of improving equipment and the living conditions for its troops, and partly due to refocusing strategy across the Taiwan strait.

On the positive side, Dr Gill said that China had made a complete about-turn in policy on weapons proliferation compared with 15 years ago, when it actively sought to undermine international treaties.

He also said that despite criticisms over its supplies of weapons to Africa and other unstable regions, its share of the global arms trade had fallen to about two per cent.

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By ABC correspondent Peter Lloyd and wires

Burma cyclone death toll 22,000 and rising. (AFP)

Kyi Minn is health adviser for World Vision in Burma and he says that on top of the 22,000 the military regime has admitted have died, there are another 60,000 missing - presumed dead.

ABC correspondent Peter Lloyd reports there are also indications that the massive aid effort is being hampered by a lack of organisation and infrastructure in Burma to distribute the urgently needed supplies.

The storm happened at the weekend, but the military junta's slowness to let international aid agencies in has meant that many devastated areas have still seen no help.

Agencies are still battling to get all the visas and permits they need to do their work in flooded and cyclone-ravaged towns and villages.

More details are emerging from Burma about the scale of death and destruction caused by cyclone Nargis.

Kyi Minn says water is in short supply and power to many communities is still cut.

"We don't have direct communication with them because there is no phone lines and transportation is very limited because of the roads are still blocked and some areas are flooded and you cannot go, so we have to rely on the information that's brought by the eye witnesses there," Mr Minn said.

"So they were saying that the areas there is quite serious. They found a lot of dead bodies there and the sanitation is quite bad over there."

The aid agency save the Children says millions of people have been left homeless in the worst affected region in southern Burma.

The Rangoon-based organisation says there are harrowing accounts emerging of villages where rotting bodies have begun decomposing, posing a serious health risk for survivors.

Aid workers who flew over the southern region said entire villages appear to have been washed away, and seen rice fields strewn with bodies.

Save the Children's country director Andrew Kirkwood said there were unconfirmed reports that people were dying as a result of receiving no supplies of food or clean water since the storm hit on Saturday.

Aid agencies are calling for speedier access to survivors, with Burma's military government still refusing to issue travel visas.

Kyi Minn says the delay in allowing international aid in has created a problem.

"It will be a big problem but we cannot wait for the international aid to come. We have to rely also on the local communities," he said.

"So what we are also doing is we also mobilise the local communities there and nearby villages and there's a very high spirit of voluntarism, so they are also helping each other.

"They bring in food and water supply to the affected area wherever they could - so we are working together with the local communities there."

The United Nations food agency says the cyclone damage to Burma's rice crops may cause food shortages.

The storm has hit an area that produces 65 per cent of the country's rice output, which puts a further strain on the already tight world rice market.

Australia's Ambassador to Burma, Bob Davis, is in Rangoon and he says there is concern the authorities are not doing enough to help the relief effort.

"We are concerned though that they seemed not to be focusing on what is the major priority one would have expected at this stage, and that is to address the humanitarian problems and have that as a priority issue rather than continuing their proposal to proceed with the referendum," Mr Davis said.

Aid hampered

ABC correspondent Peter Lloyd says when aid supplies arrived at Rangoon airport, they had to be unloaded by hand.

"One of the things that was self evident at Rangoon airport yesterday when the Thai military flew in their supplies was that they flew them in on large Hercules type aircraft. When they got there they discovered that there was no forklifts, even at the airport, to move stuff around so they had to get off and do hand to hand, shoulder to shoulder unpacking of the aircraft," he said.

"So, it's at that very elementary level that the infrastructure in Burma because of years of disgraceful behaviour by the regime has left this country bankrupt of the kind of infrastructure it needs to respond to a crisis on this level."

He says the World Health Organisation (WHO) is most clearly concerned with cholera and other water-borne disease breaking out.

"There are descriptions coming out from aid agencies who have flown over the worst hit area in the south, describing villages that have been wiped out and they're seeing rotting bodies in rice fields," he said.

"Now this is the same water supply on which the survivors are going to have to rely for drinking and bathing water. So there's a perfect storm, if you like, a follow up which is confronting these people and with which the aid agencies are desperately trying to negotiate their way into to try to give assistance for."

And he says so far, there are not many signs that the military junta will be doing anything to speed up the delivery of aid.

"Well on past indications you'd have to say, thinking back to our coverage of the tsunami disaster in 2004, the regime at first ignored, denied and effectively blamed. They said the scale of the disaster in their country was nowhere near what it later was revealed to have been. The resources simply weren't thrown at Burma because they said they didn't need it," he said.

"Now the regime is showing no greater signs of opening up at the moment. They've let in supplies from some of the ASEAN friendly nations like Thailand who have used military aircraft to move some pretty elementary stuff in, but the scale of the disaster clearly calls for a much larger operation and so far the regime doesn't seem to have acknowledged that, either in public or in practice by rewarding the organisations who need to get in there with the visas."

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