The following are excerpts of a July 24, 2001 interview of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld with editors and reporters of The Washington Times:

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The China threat

Q: It's been widely reported that there is going to be a shift in focus towards Asia, which means China, and the issue of China obviously has become very important in a sense that people say, don't make China into an enemy, but yet it already appears as if they regard us as their main enemy. You have kind of a reputation as being a realist on China. Could you give us your take on what you think is going on with the [People's Republic of China] today?

A: Well first, go back to [director of the Pentagon Office of Net Assessment] Andy Marshall's paper. You are right. It did discuss Asia, but rather than suggesting an emphasis on Asia and a de-emphasis on the Persian Gulf or on Europe or some of the Third World, I think it did not. I have been over it quite carefully. It pointed out that Asia is different from Europe in terms of distances, in terms of the kinds of countries that are there, and the nature of your political system, their economic systems. As a result the Department of Defense needs to be cognizant of that and recognize the difference in capabilities that conceivably would be appropriate in the first instance for the purpose of deterring and in the second instance for the purpose of prevailing.

And it would possibly be more appropriate to have a capability-based strategy for the mid- to longer term problems because -- as I have pointed out repeatedly -- history is replete with examples where people have failed to predict what was going to happen next year and where the problem was going to come from and what form that threat or problem might take. So we are kind of looking at near-term threat-based strategy, where you can see it, North Korea, Iraq, or something like that, as opposed to the mid- to longer term where it's really a matter more of capabilities that are going to deter.

What do I think about China? My view of China is that its future is not written, and it is being written. I don't have any code words that I would characterize as a doctrine or anything. But I am kind of old-fashioned. I kind of begin with the reality, and the reality is [China] is reaching out from an economic standpoint to the rest of the world to try to engage economies and have those economies engage them.

They are increasing their defense budget every year by some probably double-digit figure, although it's very difficult to nail down precisely what their budgets are, since they have more than one.

China's future
Everyone in this room is probably a better judge than I am as to whether it's possible, and whether and to what extent it's possible to have an economic system that reaches out to the rest of the world -- and therefore has to live with the rest of the world in terms of relatively free-market-oriented policies, and cope with the inevitable reality of computers and people coming to your country and the press, and the things, the interaction that occurs from having successful economy, which they clearly have indicated they would like to try to do. And then ask yourself how compatible that is with a dictatorial emerging political system that lacks the political freedoms that we enjoy, and the successful, many, if not most, successful economies enjoy. ...

I happen to be in the camp that suggests that that's an awfully tough thing to do, that repression does work, but if you try to do it while you are simultaneously achieving a high-growth economy through extensive interaction with other nations in the world, you are putting at risk your ability to repress. And so I'm not wise enough to know how it's going to come out, and I don't know the kind of choices they are going to make, whether they are going to get to a fork in the road and decide that they are not willing to put the regime at risk, and therefore they will trim because if they trim too much, they are inevitably going to be penalized because money is a coward.
People vote with their feet. If you create an environment that's inhospitable to investment, the inevitable result is that investment will dry up.

Taiwan and China

Q: The president [of the Republic of China] called for joint Japan-U.S.-Taiwan missile defense and [communist China] also building up their long-range missiles. How do you view, since you did the missile commission years ago, how do you view the Chinese missile buildup of short and long range?

A: I guess I view it as not surprising and totally unrelated to our missile defense discussions. I keep hearing that what we do on missile defense could have an effect on the nature of what they might do with respect to their ballistic missiles. It seems to me that's misguided, that they are going to do what they are going to do. It matters little what we do, I think, with respect to defense.

How do I view it? I guess it doesn't surprise me. Here is a country that apparently has the wherewithal to do that. They have decided that it's important for their view of themselves to be the factor in the region. And they are making significant investments and not just in immediate capabilities, but they are making significant investments in future capabilities. ...

Q: You have been sort of criticized for overseeing a defense budget which is insufficient to fulfill the promises made by the president during the presidential campaign to restore America's military. What's your response to those criticisms?

A: Well, the president cares about national defense and national security, and he has to take into account a host of things as president. I have to worry about the Defense Department, and that's what I worry about. He has to worry about lots of different things, and deal with a Congress that has opinions of its own, and what he has proposed is a number that is I guess the largest single increase since 1986. It's percentagewise the largest increase of any department. The problem the president and I are facing really is the fact that for a period of some eight years, actually 10 years, the peace dividend was being extracted and they overshot by a substantial margin.

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