So, the New York Times has noticed the resurgent Chinese military that’s been weaned on nationalist paranoia:

The Pentagon is worried that its increasingly tense relationship with the Chinese military owes itself in part to the rising leaders of Mr. Cao’s generation, who, much more than the country’s military elders, view the United States as the enemy. Older Chinese officers remember a time, before the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 set relations back, when American and Chinese forces made common cause against the Soviet Union. Younger officers have known only an anti-American ideology, which casts the United States as bent on thwarting China’s rise.

“All militaries need a straw man, a perceived enemy, for solidarity,” said Huang Jing, a scholar of China’s military and leadership at the National University of Singapore. “And as a young officer or soldier, you always take the strongest of straw men to maximize the effect. Chinese military men, from the soldiers and platoon captains all the way up to the army commanders, were always taught that America would be their enemy.”

A little late to the party, Gray Lady. You’re gonna have to do better than putting faith in junior-officer exchanges, though.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.