Os americanos são especialmente paranoicos; durante anos e décadas, eles se prepararam para um enfrentamento, ainda que virtual, com a URSS, apenas para ver esta implodir em algum momento do climax da competição estratégica. Com a China, se passa mais ou menos a mesma coisa, sendo que a paranoia do balanço estratégico não é justificada (pois a China vai continuar atrás durante décadas), mas a da espionagem é. Os chineses espionam descaradamente o tempo todo, o que é normal sempre quando se está atrás. Aliás, o novo presidente francês, disse, em março último, que "os chineses trapaceiam o tempo todo"... (sorrisos amarelos).
Mas esse tipo de competição, que os obriga a sempre avançar, é bom para os EUA e para o Pentágono, do contrário eles ficariam parados no mesmo lugar, sem grandes progressos tecnológicos. A espionagem chinesa os obriga a avançar cada vez mais no upgrade inventivo.
Bom negócio para todos (assim é, se lhe parece...).
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
China linked to ‘economic espionage’
By Geoff Dyer in Washington
Financial Times, May 18, 2012
China is the world’s biggest supporter of “economic espionage”, the Pentagon says in its annual report on the Chinese military which also claimed that Beijing’s defence budget is much higher than official numbers.
Friday’s report said China would continue to be an “aggressive and capable” collector of sensitive US technological information, including that owned by defence-related companies, and represented a “growing and persistent threat to US national security”.
“Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage,” the report said.
The Pentagon report is the latest in a series of blunt warnings from the Obama administration about the growing risks to US interests from Chinese espionage, including from cyberattacks.
A November report prepared by US intelligence agencies said that concerted cyber espionage by China and Russia posed “significant and growing threats” to American economic power and national security.
Given the lack of transparency that has surrounded China’s military build-up, the Pentagon’s annual analysis of Chinese defence spending is a closely watched document, even if some Pentagon critics fear that scaremongering about China is being used to justify parts of the US budget.
Even by China’s official figures, military spending has increased at double-digit rates during almost every year for the last couple of decades, although as a proportion of overall spending the defence budget has remained relatively constant.
The Pentagon said China’s actual military spending in 2011 was between $120bn and 180bn. That compares to an official Chinese budget for 2012 of Rmb670.247bn ($110bn), which was 11.2 per cent higher than the year before.
In 2011, China conducted the first test flight of the J-20 stealth fighter jet, while a refitted aircraft carrier acquired from the Soviets was also launched last year.
Among new developments in Chinese spending, the Pentagon said there were indications that parts of a locally-made aircraft carrier were already under construction and could be operational by 2015.
The report said that the J-20 test flight demonstrated China’s ambitions to develop an aircraft that combined “stealth attributes, advanced avionics and super-cruise engines”, making it a potential rival to the Pentagon’s own new generation fighter jet, the F-22 Raptor. A separate US government document published last month quoted US intelligence agencies as predicting the Chinese jets could be operational by 2018.
The F-22 Raptor suffered a significant blow this week when strict restrictions were placed on their use because of concerns about the safety of pilots from a lack of oxygen. The F-22 has been controversial for years, with powerful critics in Congress claiming that the expensive project was not needed because there is no obvious rival. However, its supporters point to Chinese and Russian efforts to build a new generation of stealth fighter jets.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012.
