China's Arms Race

Indeed, China's military will require decades to reach true superpower status. Some U.S. analysts suggest the P.L.A. may be 30 years behind the U.S.--a nearly insuperable gap. China's plans to launch cyberwar or antisatellite weapons may sound scary, but they are a long way from reality. China's nuclear arsenal, whose warheads aren't even attached to missiles in peacetime, is designed only as a retaliatory force. Even with the Dongfeng-31 missiles online, Beijing's strategic-missile force will be just one-eighteenth the size of Washington's. Those limits mean that while Beijing may be able to put up a credible fight to protect the homeland, it still can't project a large force thousands of miles away--a capability that belongs uniquely to the U.S.

At the very least, however, China's new military tools will alter the balance of power in Asia. Explains Ralph Cossa, who heads the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies in Honolulu: "China isn't trying to project power to San Francisco Bay. It's trying to project power to the South China Sea." Though China's leaders may want to restore their nation to its traditional Middle Kingdom status as Asia's dominant power, they must still face a formidable U.S. military presence in the Pacific. That doesn't necessarily mean war, but it almost certainly means more tension. "Are the Chinese building a gun that ultimately they're going to point at us?" asks Kent Harrington, a former CIA intelligence officer for Asia. "I don't think today we can reach that conclusion. But we need to talk to them about it now to make sure it doesn't happen in the future." In the meantime, the U.S. can expect the spies to keep coming.