From San Diego Union-Tribune, via Rand Corporation website:
Ever since China test-fired ballistic missiles into the ocean near Taiwan in 1995 and 1996, many analysts and commentators have sounded the alarm about the threat of China’s military power. This has been a false alarm until now, but within a decade China could supplant America as the dominant military power in East Asia.
In 1995, China’s military was almost exclusively equipped with weapons systems that were based on 1950s-era Soviet designs – the same type of obsolete weapons that the U.S. military systematically destroyed in the 1991 Gulf War with Iraq. [Full Text]
Roger Cliff is a senior political scientist at Rand Corporation.
