[pmulcahy11b]

I don't think that China poses a military threat to most of the countries in the world right now. Maybe in 10-15 years when oil supplies have gotten a lot shorter, it will get "interesting." But right now, the biggest threat from China is economic. They are constantly manipulating the worth of the yuan (I think that's the name of their currency), giving it an artificially high or low value depending upon what's better for them at the moment. They undermine countries' economies by selling them cheap goods and keeping their manufacturing costs artificially low so that factories in the receiving countries close or have high operating costs and correspondingly high prices for their goods.