China Bristles at U.S. Report on Its Military Ambitions

China denounced a Pentagon report that says Beijing wants to expand its regional military power, insisting Wednesday that it is no threat to its neighbors and accusing Washington of looking for justification to sell advanced weapons to Taiwan.

The Foreign Ministry said it filed a protest with the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

“The report has baselessly attacked China’s modernization of its national defense,” Deputy Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said in a statement.

The report says Chinese military planners are looking at expanding beyond their immediate goal of dominating Taiwan, the self-ruled island claimed by Beijing. It says that in the long term, an increasingly modern Chinese military could pose a threat to U.S. and other forces.

“Some of China’s military planners are surveying the strategic landscape beyond Taiwan,” says the 45-page annual assessment of China’s military strength.

Beijing is modernizing its arsenal with fighter jets, submarines, missiles and other high-tech weapons, many of them bought from Russia.

Earlier Thursday, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing responded to a question about the report by saying China is intent on “developing in a peaceful way.”

“Not only is China not a threat to anyone, but we would also like to make friends with people in every country, work together and develop mutually beneficial cooperation in order to facilitate everyone’s progress,” Li said.

Governments throughout Asia worry about Beijing’s growing military power, driven by a booming economy and double-digit annual spending increases.

China is spending up to $90 billion a year on its military, a sum that is the world’s third-largest, behind the United States and Russia, according to the report.

Yang criticized that comparison, noting that spending on China’s 2.5-million-member People’s Liberation Army is far below the Pentagon’s $400-billion-a-year budget.