The Continuing Problem of China

China was a wild card before I joined the Navy a few years ago. It still is.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- China cannot be certain that its military, while steadily strengthening, is capable of conquering Taiwan, the Pentagon said Tuesday in a new report on Chinese military power and strategy.

Over the longer term, however, an increasingly modernizing Chinese military could pose a threat to U.S. and other forces in the Asia-Pacific region, it said.

"Some of China's military planners are surveying the strategic landscape beyond Taiwan," the report said.

Among a number of such developments, it noted improvements in Chinese intercontinental-range missiles "capable of striking targets across the globe, including the United States."

Air and naval force improvements also appear to be geared for operations beyond the geography around Taiwan, an island less than 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the Chinese coast, it added.

China needs to be watched, and countered. American politicians think in four year cycles, Chinese politicians look at the world in the long term. In the ancient world, Rome and Carthage expanded into each others' territories, and conflict ensued. The same happened with the British and the French, the Americans and the Japanese, and so on and so forth.

It's supply and demand, folks, and allowing China to become the next world super power would be bad news for everyone concerned.

Be aware.