China Develops Its Strategic Airlift Capability. Debates: China's military: Statements. China’s military rise: The dragon’s new teeth. AT A meeting of South-East Asian nations in 2010, China's foreign minister Yang Jiechi, facing a barrage of complaints about his country's behaviour in the region, blurted out the sort of thing polite leaders usually prefer to leave unsaid. “China is a big country,” he pointed out, “and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact.” Indeed it is, and China is big not merely in terms of territory and population, but also military might. Its Communist Party is presiding over the world's largest military build-up. And that is just a fact, too—one which the rest of the world is having to come to terms with. China's military power: Modernisation in sheep's clothing.