The Department of Defense recently released its long-overdue annual report on China’s military power. The document tells us much about how the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration would like to approach relations with China, and not nearly enough about China’s military modernization. It suggests we have a Congress that does not take the China challenge seriously and a White House that is uncertain how to tackle it.

The problems started with the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which revised the 2000 NDAA — the law that requires an annual DOD report to Congress on China’s military power — in a number of ways. Most noticeably, the 2010 NDAA changed the report’s title from “Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” to “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China,” which obscures the report’s purpose by framing China as a passive actor. China’s development of an anti-satellite (ASAT) capability, for example, is not a military development involving China; it is a decision by China to enhance its military power.

Also, before the 2010 NDAA, the report’s scope included “the tenets and probable development of Chinese grand strategy”; now, Congress has stripped away every mention of “grand strategy.” DOD had in the past been instructed to provide analysis of “trends in Chinese strategy that would be designed to establish [China] as the leading political power in the Asia-Pacific region and as a political and military presence in other regions of the world.” Now, DOD must report on “trends in Chinese security and military behavior that would be designed to achieve, or that are inconsistent with,” “the goals . . . shaping Chinese security strategy and military strategy.”

Further, since its inception, the report’s purpose has been to inform the Senate and House about Chinese military power so that Congress can adequately fund U.S. defense needs; this is why the law requires that the report be submitted by March 1 of each year, long before the NDAA debates take place. But this year, not wanting to anger the Chinese — who have complained about the report year after year — the White House delayed its release, presumably excising declassified information that it deemed too provocative. (The Chinese complained anyway.) By the time the administration released the report to the public, Congress was in recess and the rest of Washington on vacation. Published too late to have the impact that it should on the congressional debate over the 2011 NDAA, and at a time when few members of Congress are likely to comment, the report has failed in its purpose: to inform Congress as it prepares the coming year’s defense-spending bill.

It seems that the White House wishes to avoid an open, honest, and public debate about China’s military modernization and intentions in Asia. Such a debate might make it more difficult for the administration to pursue a cooperative approach to relations with Beijing. While the recent decisions to wade into the South China Sea territorial disputes and to send the USS George Washington to exercise in the Yellow Sea — both of which elicited strident Chinese objections — suggest that the White House might be abandoning that approach, the report’s handling should make outside observers think twice. At best, it suggests a confused China policy; at worst, that the president prefers “business as usual” — or rather, business as in 2009. This president seems most comfortable when he is extending an open hand; he is unlikely to quickly set aside the “strategic reassurance” policy articulated last year. If that means manipulating the public’s perceptions of a rising China, then so be it.

The irony of this state of affairs, unfortunately, seems to be lost on this administration. It is Beijing — not any report produced by the Defense Department — that is primarily responsible for how China is perceived. As the new report notes, “the limited transparency in China’s military and security affairs enhances uncertainty and increases the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation.” Beijing fails to satisfactorily explain the reasoning behind its aggressive military modernization, thus generating concern and suspicion amongst its neighbors and in the United States.

Unfortunately, the DOD report also fails to adequately explain Chinese military modernization. A close reading reveals that the modernization is robust, and is occurring across all of the service branches. But the report (like its predecessors) does not explain how these developments are related to each other or to Beijing’s strategic goals. What role will they play in China’s security strategy? In China’s military strategy?

For example, this year’s report, like last year’s, notes that China is developing an aircraft carrier and that its navy has already started training pilots for carrier-borne aviation. But it does not explain that aircraft carriers are the quintessential instrument of military power projection. A nation does not build them if it does not see a need to project air power to distant shores. With Chinese carriers patrolling the seas, Guam, Australia, all of Southeast Asia, and the entirety of India will for the first time be in range of People’s Liberation Army tactical aircraft.