US has no cause to be adversarial with China

As always, the US Department of Defense's 2017 report on military and security developments involving China carries some of the all-too-familiar biased interpretations of China's actions and intentions.

Portraying Chinese moves regarding its South China Sea territories and approach to related disputes as "coercion", for instance, it ignores Beijing's endeavors to ease tensions, and its latest consensuses with the Philippines and Vietnam on dispute management and bilateral consultations. The accusation that China supports its modernization via "cyber theft, targeted foreign direct investment, and exploitation of the access of private Chinese nationals" to foreign technologies is also included as usual.

But that might well be all that can be said of the concerns China's growing presence elicits. Because although the Department of Defense openly identifies China as one of the US' "potential adversaries" - along with Russia, Iran and Democratic People's Republic of Korea - in its "Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Request", the report appears genuine about the nonaggressive nature of Chinese military progress.