ARTICLE: The Chinese Navy: How Big a Threat to the U.S.?, By Bill Powell, Time, Apr. 21, 2009

For years, as defense analyst and occasional Pentagon consultant Thomas P.M. Barnett writes in his new book Great Powers: America in the World After Bush, the promoters of what he calls Washington's "Leviathan" force have used the prospect of war with China over Taiwan or possibly North Korea as justification for the purchase of "big ticket items." ... Even Barnett concedes that China "goes out of its way to hide what it procures and then slyly trots out its big ticket items every so often so our satellites can get a few shots of them."