Point taken. As I've noted in the past, I am no expert on the CIA, so I am willing to accept that the charge in the Gertz article cited is either wrong or overblown.
Nonetheless, I believe that my statement that China is a greater threat than they are generally credited with posing remains true. Despite our general superiority over the People's Liberation Army, we are not immune to defeats in narrow areas--especially if we cannot bring our superior power to bear in time over in China's backyard. I will repeat what I wrote in my earlier post:
I think some of the discussion about whether China can become a rival superpower misses the point that China could be a threat even if it only manages to become a regional power. Recall that in 1941, Japan's economy was perhaps a tenth of America's and that huge imbalance in power didn't prevent Japan from driving us from the western Pacific and forcing us into nearly four years of war to defeat them. So don't get so caught up in precisely measuring China's military budget and comparing it to ours. Look at their despotic form of government and their hostility and intentions.
As the Gertz article noted, the overdue Pentagon report on Chinese military power could be quite interesting in addressing whether the intelligence slipped up or not. I eagerly await its publication.
