BEIJING - China's growing military has no intention of challenging the United States, a senior People's Liberation Army officer said, before the likely unveiling of the country's annual defense budget on Thursday.
PLA Senior Colonel Luo Yan was responding to a new book by a fellow PLA officer, who argues China should aim to displace the United States militarily, the official China Daily reported.
At a news conference on Thursday ahead of the convening of the annual session of China's national parliament on Friday, a parliament spokesman is likely to follow past practice and announce the country's defense budget for the year.
Some PLA officers, including Luo, have called for a rise in military spending that will send a defiant signal to the United States after Washington went ahead with plans to sell $6.4 billion of arms to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing says is its territory.
Luo indicated China's military spending was focused on protecting its claims to the island, but not spoiling for a confrontation with the United States, which remains much more powerful economically and militarily.
"We need to think much more on how to preserve national integrity," Luo said, according to the China Daily. "We have no intention of challenging the U.S."
Luo is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), an advisory body that gathers every year with the Communist Party-controlled parliament.
Luo's remarks and others by PLA officers underscored China's tricky balance in its recent friction with the United States: wanting to push back against Washington over the arms sales to Taiwan and President Barack Obama's recent meeting with the Dalai Lama, but also wanting to avoid actions that could stoke the tensions into broader confrontation.
Beijing denounces the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled Buddhist spiritual leader, as a "separatist" for advocating self-rule for his homeland, which he fled in 1959.
Last year, the government set the official military budget at 480.7 billion yuan ($70.4 billion), a 14.9 percent rise on the one in 2008, continuing a nearly unbroken succession of double-digit increases for more than two decades.
Other PLA officers attending the CPPCC session also denounced "The China Dream," the book by PLA officer Liu Mingfu that sets out bold hopes for China to become the global "champion," with a military so powerful the United States will not dare challenge China.
"China should still hide its strength and bide its time," said PLA Navy Admiral Yin Zhuo, responding to a question about the book, reported local news media. He was using a traditional phrase "tao guang yang hui" often used to describe a modest approach to asserting international power.
"I'm extremely opposed to the claim and idea that we should be the number one military power," said Yin, who is also a member of the CPPCC.
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