The United States has a large faction, including among those in power, that believes that American supremacy as a goal is a crappy idea, and that it's wrong to want the strongest military or most influential economy in the world.

Without getting into the actual merits of the argument, I'm simply pointing out that America is the only nation I know of among the major powers, and almost the only nation among all nations, that harbors such ideas.

China has absolutely no problems with the idea that China should be top of the heap in all categories, military, economic, and anything else they put their mind to.

A deep concern that other people might not like us or might be offended if we are too large, too strong, or too successful, seems to be a uniquely Western affliction.

Without the United States, China would have simply eaten Taiwan years ago. They still have this in mind, and if they're patient, at some point they're going to get a leadership in the U.S. that's going to believe so strongly in American self-doubt and guilt that we'll let them do it without a fight.

How this affects our own military spending is another issue. I've seen reports like this for the Soviets, too, and it goes without saying that there's a lot of incentive for such a report to support the need for more military spending. As with climate issues, what's actually happening has to be carefully separated from speculation.