"Watch what I do, not what I say" is an old and ominous adage.  Nowhere today does it apply more forcefully than to the military intentions of the People's Republic of China.  The PRC is on a virtual rampage of modernizing and strengthening the personnel expertise, hardware technology, and warfighting doctrine of all its armed forces -- everything from subs to ICBMs to conventional air power.  The Pentagon's new annual report to Congress poses a crucial question:  What do China's non-transparent leaders see as the end state of this manic buildup?

China has a documented history of saying one thing while doing another.  The result is not reassuring for the eventual balance of power in the Western Pacific and beyond.  I'd like to offer three observations about reality in China that at first might seem unrelated.  Put together, they suggest things about PRC society that I'll let readers judge for themselves.

First, China has been under pressure for years to allow its currency, the yuan, to float according to market conditions against the U.S. dollar.  The artificial maintenance of a cheap exchange rate of 8 yuan per dollar has given the Chinese economy a lot of unfair advantages worldwide.  Suddenly, on May 15, China revalued their currency.  But they did so by a measly one-tenth of one percent, right after the Dow had suffered its worst weekly drop in three years.  The result was further downward turmoil in the Dow, and a weakening of the dollar against other benchmark currencies including the British pound and the Japanese yen.  America wasn't helped at all by Beijing's move, while Beijing could wear the mantle of the good guy -- and relieve some domestic-Chinese inflationary pressure to boot.  Shrewd timing?  Yes.  Sending a message?  Perhaps.  When does fair economic competition become malevolent economic war?  You decide.

Second, China plays callously hypocritical games amid the rising plague of modern maritime piracy.  One major cargo ship that was boarded and taken over by pirates was traced to a harbor on the Chinese island of Hainan.  The hijacked ship, its identity disguised by a quick paint job and professionally falsified documents, was busy unloading its valuable cargo into several smaller ships.  All had been planned, organized, and executed by piracy syndicates headquartered in Hong Kong and Shanghai -- Chinese sovereign territory.  International authorities forced Beijing to do something.  What did they do?  They repatriated all the pirates on the ship to their (chaotic, impoverished) native countries in Southeast Asia, with no legal penalty, and the pirates weren't arrested once back home either.  The shadowy yet tight-knit maritime industry as a whole was utterly outraged, and said so rather loudly.  But when another merchant ship, also hijacked by foot soldiers from another Chinese pirate syndicate, was again traced to Hainan soon thereafter, Beijing did the very same thing:  They sent the pirates home without any punishment.  Further international pressure seems to have had no effect on China's blatant contempt for the rule of law.  Hainan is a thriving "pirate island" today.  Hard to believe?  It's true.

Third, it's been reported that the average man or woman on the street in China is driven, industrious, proud, obedient despite inner conflicts and qualms, patriotic/nationalistic -- and decidedly anti-American.  School children are taught that the United States is a racist country with a rigid socio-economic caste system riven by corruption and iniquity:  Homeless people starve in our capital within sight of the White House, and some freeze to death every winter.  Thanks in part to internal propaganda flowing out of central government policy goals, many Chinese citizens are more resentful and paranoid about U.S. behavior that most of us ever are about them.  They view the accidental fatal bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade (during the troubles with Milosevic) as an intentional act of murder by imperialist American.  Worse, they see the incident as tying directly, in a massive U.S. conspiracy against China, to the mid-air collision between a Chinese fighter and an unarmed U.S. EP-3 spy plane.  This mishap occurred in international air space, and the EP-3 was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan even though the airport tower refused to even acknowledge the American plane in distress.  Beijing blamed Washington bitterly for the unfortunate death of their fighter pilot.  The EP-3 crew was held incommunicado for 11 days; the plane was stripped to the bare airframe before being reluctantly returned to its rightful owner.  This widespread anti-Americanism goes much further.  Many Chinese celebrated when they learned about 9/11.  They felt, quite sincerely by their own standards, that the U.S. had gotten what we deserved.  Outrageous?  To us, certainly.  Even abhorrent.  But that's the People's Republic.

Where is all this going by the mid/late 2020s?  Only time will tell.  Unfortunately, our country lacks a good track record at sticking to plans and commitments on such an extended future timeframe.  We need to get our act together now.