Recently China announced an 8.1% rise in military spending for its 2018 budget. This is the largest increase in several years, but it represents continuity rather than signaling any ominous portent.

Fears of a “China threat” are unfounded.

China consults with the U.S. over again participating in the multinational military exercises this summer.

China’s top newspaper, decrying Washington as a trouble-maker, said on Monday U.S. moves in the South China Sea like last week’s freedom of navigation operation will only cause China to strengthen its deployments in the disputed waterway.

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force had an eventful year in 2017. The takeaway from 2017 is that while current exercises reveal PLAAF limitations and underscore China’s need for a regional alliance, progress has been made and will continue over the coming years.

Despite some friction, the China-U.S. military relationship has held.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday said he expects military relations would become a major stabilizing factor in Sino-U.S. ties.

The future of China-US relations will to a large extent be determined by the intentions of the two countries and their views of each other. For quite some time, the US side has complained about China’s ‘lack of transparency in strategic intentions’. But as some American scholars argue, if you regard the other party as an enemy, hostility may well become a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’.

Maritime trade accounts for 90% of world trade, therefore international “choke points” like the Strait of Malacca are critically important for China, the largest trading nation in the world. The PLA Navy harbors no ambitions to control these straits, but it doesn’t want the straits to be controlled by others, either. The psychological effect of a Chinese carrier offshore would help “to subdue the enemy without using force”.

China-US military relations have reached another crossroads with Donald Trump as the new US president. Whether the two sides tend to have more competition and friction or more dialogue and cooperation will shape the two countries’ overall relationship in a major way.