BEIJING: China has said that Pentagon's charges about Beijing's efforts towards a missile build-up on the Indian border and cause instability in the Asian region as both baffling and a "cock and bull story".
"The allegation is an utterly cock-and-bull story about the Chinese military based on a wild guess and illogical reasoning," the official Xinhua news agency said. Xinhua claims runs counter to a report in the State-owned People's Daily, which told a different story on Wednesday."
In mid -August, a Chinese missile battalion which has just armed itself with new equipment in the past half-year, maneuvered to the Gobi desert thousands of kilometers away and carried out a combat drill in which the anti-aircraft missile Red Flag 9 accurately destroyed distant targets at a very low altitude, setting a new record in this area for the PLA Air Force," the paper said.
The contrast in reports suggest China is prepared to admit it was upgrading its missile systems but would not accept it if it comes in the form of charges from the US defense department.
Observers said China is in the process of upgrading its missiles weapons, and replacing the older versions on the Indian border with the latest ones after they are tested in the Gobi desert.
Discussing the Pentagon report, Xinhua said, "It is more baffling when it claimed the Chinese military imposed ascendant threat to regional stability". It said that the so-called advanced weapons the report discusses are not "new faces" of military hardware and have been possessed by some countries years or even decades ago.
"China has no intention or interest to beget any enemies or antagonistic rivals in the world," it said.
Pentagon's observations on missile systems in its latest report is along the lines it had taken in its 2010 report when it said, "To improve regional deterrence, the PLA has replaced older liquid-fueled, nuclear capable CSS-3 intermediate-range ballistic missiles with more advanced and survivable solid-fueled CSS-5 MRBMs and may be developing contingency plans to move airborne troops into the region," the Pentagon said in its 2010 report.
It is not clear which parts of the long border has been chosen by the PLA to deploy its improved missiles.
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