Who's a Rummy?

Rumsfeld has more to say in China.

The funny thing is, the Chinese are giving him far better coverage than the Washington Post.

Here's a quick example, note the bold:
Chinese:

"He also stressed that the two militaries should seek common ground while reserving differences and promote exchanges in the forms of academy education, personnel exchanges and fleet visits and that he has no doubt about China's military build-up. He was quoted as saying by Zhang Bangdong, director of the Foreign Affairs Office (FAO) of Chinese Defense Ministry, who participated in the meeting."

Washington Post:

"At a joint news conference, the Chinese defense minister, Gen. Cao Gangchuan, rejected U.S. assertions about the pace of China's military buildup and denied that the government has been understating its defense spending. He said Chinese resources were focused on reducing domestic poverty.

"It is not necessary or even possible for us to massively increase the defense budget," Cao said, though he acknowledged that "some funding" is excluded from this year's published budget of $30.2 billion. The Pentagon says true Chinese military spending could be as high as $90 billion."

It's like the Yankees going into the Metrodome and saying to the Twins, "We see you playing baseball in the same league as us, but we don't like how you're recruiting and training new players. We want you to stop doing that." WHAT?? OF COURSE China wants to play in the big-leagues, and do so on its terms.

Ignoring for the moment Chinese history texts' emphasis on the "century of shame and humiliation" caused by imperial agressors (The U.S., Great Britan, France, Germany, et. al) taking chunks of China and using them as play-lands, there's this little thing called national pride.

Honestly, what else would you expect from a country of A. 1.3 billion people, B. A history of regional and even global supremacy, and C. Insecurity being between several othe big, powerful countries (Russia, India, Japan).
And a country who brought us those silly innovations of moveable type, paper, gunpowder, and the bureaucracy.

What kind of resposne do you think Americans would give if Costa Rica up and said to us, "we're in charge, we're going to be in charge, and so you better stop trying to improve yourselves in order to stop us from being in charge."?