The United States is not the Chinese military's most favored nation.

Before it was yanked from China's stores, "Can the Chinese Army Win the Next War?" presumed to express the sentiments of senior officers, named America as the most likely Chinese foe of the future.The United States once kept the European powers from partitioning China and in World War II fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Chinese against their Japanese occupiers. China's recent rush toward free markets led some Sinologists to hope this friendship would soon resume.

But the fumings of the militarists show that a new economic system alone can't guarantee peaceful intentions. The best seed for that is democracy - whose implantation in China should be a constant aim of U.S. foreign policy.

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