You’d think the Pentagon would be chewing its nails down to the nub over China’s military buildup.

After all, in the past few months, China unveiled its first stealth jet, reached the early operating phase of a “carrier-killer” missile and took its first-ever aircraft carrier out for a stroll.

But the Defense Department’s Asia hands don’t seem more worried by the Chinese military than they were last year. In fact, the Pentagon’s annual report on its Chinese counterpart reads a lot like the previous edition.

Yes, Beijing is rapidly modernizing its forces, as it has for years, upping its military spending by 12.7 percent last year while the Pentagon prepares for deep cuts. Yes, China’s pursuing an “expanded regional maritime strategy and presence.” And yes, in the eyes of the Pentagon’s top Asia wonk, that modernization is “potentially destabilizing.”

But while China’s new mega-missile, aircraft carrier and stealth fighter have made for pants-pooping media panic, the Pentagon is affecting the blase posture of the Brooklyn hipster.

“There’s nothing particularly magical about any one particular item,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia Michael Schiffer told reporters in a Wednesday briefing.

And key sections of the report verge on the passive aggressive. The ultimate Chinese goal is a “regionally focused” military, (.pdf) not one that challenges the United States everywhere around the planet. ”China has made less progress on capabilities that extend global reach or power projection,” the report, released Wednesday, reads. “Outside of peacetime counter-piracy missions, for example, China’s Navy has little operational experience beyond regional waters.”

Apparently, it takes more than new stealth jets, early-stage missiles and a souped-up Ukrainian carrier to get a rise out of the U.S. military.

Not that any of that sangfroid will reassure U.S. allies in the Pacific, let alone Taiwan — which is staring down the bulk of China’s “large numbers of highly accurate cruise missiles.” But the report says the Chinese made “significant progress in improving “cross-[Taiwan] Strait relations.” 

It assesses that the Chinese have learned their lesson after freaking out Pacific nations in 2010 with saber-rattling claims of expanded regional interests, citing a “desire to avoid generating opposition and countervailing responses from regional and major powers.”

In his briefing, Schiffer said that the Chinese shouldn’t take the report as a sign of U.S. hostility. Instead, it should essentially serve as a way for China to read the U.S. attitude. “I hope they do look at it as an encapsulation of the sorts of questions and the sorts of issues that we have questions about,” Schiffer said. As the top U.S. brass has said for over a year, the Pentagon wants consistent “dialog and discussion” in order to build “strategic trust.”

So what questions does the United States have for China? Primarily, they concern what the Pentagon calls “anti-access/area denial” capabilities — China’s ability to push the U.S. back from its shores, whether through missiles, subs, surface fighters, cyberattacks or warplanes.

“Current and projected systems such as the J-20 stealth fighter and longer-range conventional ballistic missiles could improve the [Chinese military's] ability to strike regional air bases, logistical facilities, and other ground-based infrastructure,” the report judges. It’s not a significantly upgraded threat from last year’s report (.pdf) — besides the reference to the new J-20.

Other aspects of the report read like they’re cribbed from my Danger Room colleague David Axe. Not only is the report similarly unimpressed by China’s refurbished Ukranian aircraft carrier, it reminds us that China still has “several years” before it can master the complex operations of flying and landing planes and helicopters from it at “even a minimal level.” (It’ll take until 2015, the report guesses, for China to build its own carrier, still ahead of its ability to use it properly.)

Danger Room wants to know why China hasn’t developed its own killer drones. The report cites the occasional unmanned surveillance drone, like the Harpies China bought from Israel in the ’90s, but no mention of the new “secret drone.”

And the report highlights China’s record 15 space launches in 2010, but doesn’t express any real worry about them.

The report is less sanguine about Chinese advances in its cybercapabilities. It cites China’s apparent hacking into U.S. government computer systems, judging China was “exfiltrating” info from U.S. networks.

“Although this alone is a serious concern,” the report says, “the accesses and skills required for these intrusions are similar to those necessary to conduct computer network attacks.” It carefully parses Chinese official writings to highlight a growing importance of cyber — far more than the 2010 version did.

“It’s no secret that cyber is a realm where deeper engagement between the United States and China — so that we can work on common rules of the road and a common way forward — is necessary,” Schiffer said.

Even with big defense cuts on the horizon, the U.S. has an overwhelming advantage, whether in the refueling tankers that make the U.S. Air Force dominant over planet Earth, its decades of experience as a global Navy and its deep memory of how its forces wage war as a unified team. Even with Beijing’s rapid defense increases, China’s military budget is $91.5 billion, not even a fifth of what the U.S. spends on defense outside of the costs of the wars.

But that neglects one of China’s biggest strategic assets: the massive amounts of U.S. debt China owns. And the report itself doesn’t mention the debt at all — something Schiffer said was beyond the document’s scope. Which is pretty surprising after Adm. Mike Mullen, the top U.S. officer, called the ballooning debt the number-one threat to U.S. national security.

To paraphrase one American general, it may be that China’s most important weapons aimed at the U.S. don’t shoot.

Photo: Flickr/plusgood