Gates says China moving fast on new weapons

BEIJING — U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who says China's rapidly developing defense capabilities are worrisome to the United States, arrived Sunday in Beijing for talks about military issues with Chinese leaders.

China has made strides in building a new stealth fighter jet, and the United States is also concerned about a new ballistic missile that could theoretically explode a U.S. aircraft carrier nearly 2,000 miles out to sea. China also has apparently beaten U.S. estimates to develop that weapon.

Military analysts say China also has been working on destroying satellites in orbit. This capability would enable it to shoot down satellites used by the U.S. military in the event of war.

"They clearly have potential to put some of our capabilities at risk," Gates told reporters traveling with him to Asia. "We have to pay attention to them. We have to respond appropriately with our own programs."

China is the world's second-largest military spender after the United States, though the gap is large. China put its 2010 defense budget at about $78 billion. The sum is less than one-fifth of the U.S. spending level of about $530 billion, which doesn't include war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the U.S. thinks the actual amount spent by China is higher.

China is still years behind U.S. capabilities in radar-evading "stealth" aircraft, and even by 2025 the United States would still have far more such aircraft flying than any other nation, Gates said. China has nuclear weapons and a modern air force, but it doesn't have an aircraft carrier or bases abroad. The Pentagon's fiscal 2012 budget blueprint, which Gates outlined last week, shifts money into several programs aimed at countering the new Chinese capabilities, including a new jamming system for U.S. naval vessels to counter missiles and improved radar for F-15 fighters.

The proposed budget also would buy fewer F-35s, an advanced U.S. fighter that would play a key role in any war with China. Despite the slowdown in the program, Gates said the United States still would have far more advanced fighters by 2020 than any other country.

The talks in Beijing come a week before China's President Hu Jintao makes a state visit to the United States, a trip that Beijing sees as an important demonstration of Hu's stature after a decade in power. Gates said it was clear that Beijing wanted him to visit China to set a positive tone before Hu's trip to Washington.

Gate's visit to China is his first since 2007, when he was Defense secretary in the George W. Bush administration. He was supposed to go in June 2010, but the visit was canceled amid the downgrading of military ties after the U.S. announcement of a $5.4-billion weapons sale to Taiwan, a U.S. ally that China considers a breakaway province.

Gates also will visit South Korea for talks about averting war with the North, as well as Japan, which is alarmed by Chinese military moves.

Some analysts believe China wants to end the United States' naval superiority so it can dominate its neighbors, including U.S. allies Japan, South Korea and Singapore.

In July, when U.S. diplomats rejected China's claim that the entire South China Sea was part of its "core interests," the Chinese foreign minister reportedly stared at a Singaporean diplomat and said, "China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact."

In September, when Japan detained a Chinese captain caught fishing in disputed waters, China cut off exports of key minerals to the nation. And in November, after North Korea shelled a South Korean island, China criticized the U.S. decision to send the U.S. carrier George Washington to the Yellow Sea, off China's borders.

A 2008 study by the Rand Corp. asserts that, based on current trends, the United States by 2020 would lose a military conflict with China over Taiwan. A recent war game by an Australian think tank confirmed that finding, assessing that the number of Chinese planes would overwhelm U.S. forces, according to Aviation Week magazine.

Skeptics argue that the United States has little to fear militarily from a country that is America's second-largest trading partner and biggest debt holder. They also point out that China still lags in certain key technologies: It hasn't been able to produce its own fighter jet engine, for example, and still buys them from Russia.

However, corporate and government computer systems in the United States and elsewhere, including those of U.S. defense contractors, have been hit by cyberattacks traced back to China, although a link to the Chinese military hasn't been publicly established.

Reams of sensitive data have been stolen through digital exfiltration, U.S. officials say. The Pentagon's $300-billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is among those that have been infiltrated, officials acknowledge, though they said no classified data were taken.

Some experts think Chinese military hackers already have the ability to take down U.S. power grids and disrupt the financial system.

Compiled from The Associated Press, McClatchy Newspapers and Tribune Washington bureau