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Yuanyue Dang

China has accused the US defence chief of provoking an “ideological confrontation” with his suggestion that Washington has to maintain its strength in the face of Beijing’s “rapidly increasing” military budget.
“The relevant remarks by the US official are deliberately provoking ideological confrontation and shouting about the threat from China,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Thursday.
“We call on the US not to [apply] its hegemonic logic to China, not to view China-US relations with outdated cold war thinking, and not to use strategic competition as a means to contain and suppress China.
“China’s position is clear and consistent: whether it’s a tariff war or a trade war, whether it’s a cold war or a hot war, it can’t be fought and it can’t be won.”
Lin was responding to comments US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth made in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday.
“If we want to deter war with the Chinese or others, we have to be strong,” Hegseth said.
“They’re rapidly increasing their defence spending, modern technology, they want to supplant the United States.
“We need the defence spending, the capabilities, the weapons and the posture in the Indo-Pacific, which is something we’re very much focused on,” he said, before adding: “We don’t seek that war.”
Hegseth was in turn responding to Lin’s comments on Tuesday in which he said that if war was what the US wanted “whether it’s a tariff war, a trade war or any other kind of war, we are ready to fight to the end”.
The Pentagon chief has said that China’s ruling Communist Party is “front and centre” among foreign threats to the US.
He told Fox News on Wednesday that this was the reason the US was rebuilding its military.
“That’s why we’re re-establishing deterrence in the warrior ethos. We live in a dangerous world with powerful, ascendant countries with very different [ideologies],” he said.


The exchange comes as China prepares to increase its military budget by 7.2 per cent this year.
The proposed rise in spending is the same as in the previous two years, and a lower rate than those announced by neighbours such as India, Japan and the Philippines. European countries are also expected to announce major increases in defence expenditure.
But in the United States, Hegseth is urging his department to find ways to cut 8 per cent – roughly US$50 billion – from its budget to be reinvested in priorities aligned with a “more lethal fighting force”.
“It’s about addressing the president’s priorities, Golden Dome, [the] southern border, modernisation, hypersonics, UUVs, UAVs, China. They know we are serious and we are building for that,” he said, referring to unmanned underwater vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles.


China is the world’s second-largest military spender after the US, which had a defence budget of US$886 billion last year, or more than 3 per cent of its GDP.
The war of words between the world’s two largest economies also comes amid renewed trade tensions.
Trump announced last week that he would impose an additional 10 per cent tariff on Chinese goods, on top of the 10 per cent tariff announced last month.
On Tuesday, China announced details of its response to the new US tariffs, sanctioning some US companies and imposing an additional 10-15 per cent in duties on some American goods. It also announced plans to file a complaint with the World Trade Organisation over the matter.


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News

China

Military

Verbal volleys fired from both sides of the Pacific as the Chinese military looks set for a bigger budget


Verbal volleys fired from both sides of the Pacific as the Chinese military looks set for a bigger budget.
