BEIJING: China said Wednesday that a Pentagon report on Beijing`s expanding defence capabilities was "not beneficial" for military ties between the two nations.

"Issuing this report is not beneficial for the improvement and development of Sino-US military ties," Geng Yansheng, spokesman for the nation`s defence ministry, said in a statement faxed to AFP.

In the report released Monday, the US Defense Department said China`s military build-up in the Taiwan Strait had "continued unabated" despite better ties with the China-friendly government in Taipei, in power since 2008.

The Pentagon said Beijing was ramping up investment in a range of areas including nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, submarines, aircraft carriers and cyber warfare.

Geng insisted China was on a "path of peaceful development."
"China... firmly abides by a defensive national defence policy, does not take part in military confrontation and does not pose a military threat to any country," Geng said.

"We ask the United States... to stop remarks and behaviour that are not beneficial for mutual trust between the two militaries and Sino-US relations," he said, urging Washington to stop issuing such reports.

China`s state-run media carried a barrage of comments from experts on the issue earlier Wednesday, blasting what they called an "aggressive" Pentagon report.

"The report is not exactly professional. It uses ambiguous terms without solid proof," Ni Feng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the official China Daily newspaper.

Zheng Yongmian, director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, told the Global Times that the report had an "overly aggressive tone", though other experts said the rhetoric had "softened".

Military ties between the United States and China were suspended by Beijing months ago after Washington agreed on a 6.4-billion-dollar arms package with Taiwan that included helicopters, missile defences and mine-sweepers.

China considers Taiwan, where the mainland`s defeated nationalists fled in 1949 at the end of a bloody civil war, to be part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

BDST: 14:30 HRS, August 18, 2010