US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday said he expects US military ties with India to strengthen over the coming years and predicted that China's influence will decline unless it moves to a freer political system.
"It's pretty clear where India's going, and one would anticipate the relationship with India will continue to strengthen as we go through the period ahead," Rumsfeld said before arriving in Singapore yesterday afternoon.
"With respect to China, it's not completely clear which way they're going because of the tension ... between the nature of their political system and the nature of their economic system," he told reporters.
Rumsfeld compared and contrasted the prospects of the two Asian giants as he flew from Washington to attend an annual international security conference that draws defense ministers from around the region.
anchor
His comments made clear that the Pentagon is looking to India as an anchor in its security relationships in the region. Rumsfeld recalled that he made the first overtures to India within weeks of becoming defense secretary in 2001.
"We have what I would characterize as an excellent relationship with India. From a military-to-military standpoint it has improved in strength every year over the past four-and-a-half years," he said.
Calling India a "major power," Rumsfeld highlighted its standing as the world's largest democracy, its "relatively free economic system" and its educated population.
"With respect to the People's Republic of China, it is what it is. It's a big country, with a fairly rapid growth rate," he said.
"Its defense budget is growing apace with their economy, and they are a major weapons purchaser in the world, largely from Russia but from other countries as well, and have been deploying a great many ballistic missiles and ships and other military capabilities over a period of years now," he said.
"The tension will grow as they move through the years," he said. "To the extent that [China] leans toward a freer political system they will be a considerably more successful country and a more influential country in the world," he said.
"To the extent they don't do that there will be pressures against their economy, they will grow less fast, and they will be a less influential country in the world," he said.
Beijing declined to send any military officials to the conference. Apart from Rumsfeld, delegates include defense ministers from Japan, South Korea, India and Pakistan. North Korea and Taiwan were not invited.
`AMBIVALENT'
"China has in the past been ambivalent to these sorts of multilateral conferences," said Andrew Tan, a security analyst at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore.
"There are fears in the mainland that such conferences will be used to constrain China," he said.
That doesn't mean China isn't watching. Its small delegation is lead by Cui Tiankai (
In China's view, US efforts to strengthen its military presence in East Asia and Japan's interest in developing missile defenses show that "complicated security factors in the Asia-Pacific region are on the increase," the Chinese Cabinet said in December in a paper on the military.
China's military budget surged 11 percent last year to 211.7 billion yuan (US$25.6 billion) -- though the Pentagon puts actual spending at up to four times that figure.
Washington has reacted with increasing concern to Beijing's military spending.
It has warned US firms against selling civilian technology that could be diverted to China's military or its military-funded space program.
"The subtext to conferences like these is the rise of China," Tan said.
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