Related: Pentagon paper hurts China-US ties: expert

    BEIJING, Feb. 8 -- Recently the United States has been trying to strategically position China in a variety of ways, with new words and new concepts popping up frequently.

    President George W. Bush calls the Sino-US relationship "very complex," while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said China's rise is a "new factor" in 21st century international relations.

    Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick included China as a "stakeholder" of the existing international order led by the US.

    In the Pentagon's view, China is at a "strategic crossroads," a saying which first appeared in the 2005 China Military Power Report and repeated in the recently released 2006 Quadrennial Defence Review.

    However, the new report not only finds China at a "strategic crossroads," but also Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and most of the Middle East and Latin American nations.

    Apart from China, Russia and India also made the list. That seems to imply that, aside from "Western democracies" led by the US, the rest of the world is at a "strategic crossroads."

    In the eyes of the US, all those countries have indefinite prospects, which worries it and makes it vigilant.

    Although the list is long, an observant person would see that China is obviously the one that keeps the Pentagon fidgeting.

    For one thing, the report devotes three to four times the space on China as it does on India and Russia, and the most on a single nation.

    For another, the wording on China is the sharpest. The US calls India a "key strategic partner" that shares its value system, and Russia is a "country in transition" and does not pose a comprehensive military threat to the US.

    But China has "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the US and field disruptive military technologies that could, over time, offset US military advantages absent US counter strategies."