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Beijing's unusually fierce, and effectively official, response came in an editorial by the state Xinhua news agency: the same medium used this month to criticise America's "addiction" to debt. The article took particular exception to the suggestion that China would use its increasing naval power in the South China Sea a region where competing territorial and resource claims already threaten conflagration.
It accused a senior US military officer of "prematurely and maybe ridiculously" asserting that an expanded Chinese naval presence would have implications for regional rivalries and power dynamics.
Although Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan feel those concerns acutely, the Xinhua editorial concluded that any suggestion that China was focused on anything other than self-defence was "based on a wild guess and illogical reasoning".
The increasingly strident terms used by Xinhua, analysts say, point to a China whose confidence has been buoyed by economic frailty in the West. Echoing its previous attack on America's colossal military spending, the editorial yesterday said that for many in China, it was strange to hear such comments from the Pentagon "whose expenditures... accounted for more than an appalling 40 per cent of the world's total in 2010".
In the annual report to Congress, the Pentagon warned that China was planning to build "multiple" aircraft carriers and predicted that it would have its first indigenous carrier by 2015.
The Chinese Navy recently completed a four-day sea trial of the Varyag: a refurbished Soviet-era aircraft carrier, which it plans to use for training fighter pilots. Listing a range of growing military capabilities, including anti-ship ballistic missiles, new submarines and warships, enhanced cyber warfare technologies and a planned road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, the Pentagon report highlighted the potential threat this posed to the region, an issue of growing concern in Washington despite signs of improving US-China military relations.
Although the Pentagon report is produced with contributions from across the US Administration, the alarm bells over China's burgeoning military may come at a time when the Pentagon is having to cut its budget by $400 billion (£250 billion) over the next ten years, and possibly double that figure if the Congressional deficit-cutting committee set up by President Obama recommends a more dramatic reduction.
The report will serve as a reminder to Mr Obama and Congress that the US will need to spend money developing systems to counter any growing threat by China to the East Asian region and, in particular to Taiwan, which the US is committed to defend.
The Pentagon report emphasised the positive role China has played in counter-piracy, disaster relief and peacekeeping. But when asked at a press briefing whether the developing carrier programme would be seen in that light, Michael Schiffer, the deputy assistant secretary of defence for East Asia, replied: "Whether this proves to be a net plus for the region, or for the globe, or proves to be something that has destabilising effects and raises blood pressure in various regional capitals, I think remains to be seen."
China's military, the report said, still had large amounts of outdated equipment and lacked operational experience, but was "steadily closing the technological gap with modern armed forces". Mr Schiffer raised China's cyber warfare capabilities as one of the issues of increasing concern. In the past year, numerous computer systems had been targeted around the world, by attacks which "appear to have originated within China", he said.
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