John Tkacic observes that China "now looms as a new 'peer competitor,' against which the United States will have to devise a new Western Pacific strategy." Here's what GlobalSecurity.org has to say about the Chinese defense budget:

China's defense budget continued to grow in 2004. Chinese Finance Minister Jin Renqing proposed an increase of 11.6 percent [$2.6 billion] in military expenditures. The government forecast total revenue for the central budget at $157 billion, up 7 percent [$10.9 billion] from 2003, with a 7 percent boost in overall spending from 2003. The country's $38.7 billion deficit was the same as 2003. Adding off-budget funding for foreign weapons system imports, total defense-related expenditures for 2004 were estimated at between $50 and $70 billion dollars by Richard Lawless, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense.

In 2005, it was announced that China's military budget will rise 12.6 percent, to 247.7 billion yuan ($29.9 billion). China has announced double-digit increases in military spending nearly every year for more than a decade.

The official Chinese defense budget is thought to be an underestimation of real spending. But note that the White House's FY2007 budget requests $439.3 billion for the Department of Defense plus $50 billion for "bridge funding" for Afghanistan and Iraq. That bridge funding is significantly larger than the entire official Chinese military budget for 2005. The $439.3 billion funding request is more than double the total revenue of the Chinese government. This is not the stuff out of which a peer is made. China's 12.6 percent budget increase sounds impressive, but the FY07 budget requests a seven percent increase for the Pentagon.

That seven percent is coming from a much larger base and amounts to an increase of about $29 billion which is just a bit lower than China's overall defense budget. The PRC is not only not a peer, it's not even closing the gap.