From The Australian (link):
THE rise of China as a great economic power and the new experiments with multilateralism in East Asia will pose a challenge for US policy. The US has to recognise that there are new forces at play in the region that will alter the traditional balance of power and that the East Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 profoundly altered Asian views of how the world works. There is now far more willingness to collaborate in the region than was the case before the 1997-98 crisis.
There is a natural suspicion in Washington about the geo-political and military consequences of China’s new status as an economic power. Many fear China will use its new wealth to develop sophisticated weapons and challenge the US’s traditional military dominance in the region. Some Pentagon analysts estimate that China’s defence spending could be two or three times as large as the official estimate of $22 billion. There is concern that if China continues to spend about 2.7 per cent of gross domestic product on defence, its defence budget could rise to as much as $130 billion in 10 years or become the second largest in the world after the US.