China has criticised a US report on its military power, saying it exaggerates the country's defence capabilities and shows a "cold war mentality".
China's Foreign Ministry said the Pentagon's 2006 China Military Power Report, released on Tuesday, spreads the "China threat theory" and endangers international relations. "The (report) has a cold war mentality, deliberately overstates China's military power and expenditure, continues to spread the China threat theory, endangers international relations and brashly interferes in China's domestic affairs," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in a statement.
"China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition," Liu said, a day before Christopher Hill, the US chief negotiator to talks on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program, arrives in Beijing to meet his Chinese counterpart.
Liu denied the report's assertions that China's military modernisation altered power balances in the Asia-Pacific region, saying China was a peace-loving nation that adhered to a path of peaceful development.
| A peace-loving nation with hundreds of missiles pointed at Taiwan. |
The Foreign Ministry also requested that Washington, which is obliged by law to help Taiwan defend itself, abide by the one-China policy, stop selling weapons to Taiwan and not send "wrong signals" to the Taiwanese independence forces.
| Because they're peace-loving, you see. |
The Pentagon has been raising alarms over China's military modernisation for several years, in annual military reports that China routinely denounces as being provocative and exaggerated. This year's report praised China's globally oriented diplomacy but said its leaders had yet to explain the purposes of its military expansion and criticised its lack of transparency. |