Last Friday, the Pentagon released its “Annual Report to Congress, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2007.” The English-language media have widely reported how a Sunday editorial in People’s Daily by staff writer Xi Laiwang blasted the Pentagon report as “exaggerating, misleading, and one-sidedly playing up the ‘China threat.'” The Sunday editorial is actually a rehash of a dispatch published in the Chinese-language edition of People’s Daily on Saturday with the byline “Xi Laiwang, correspondent to the United Nations.” The original article ran under the title “Is there no exaggeration in the ‘Report on Chinese Military Power’?” In it, Xi notes that at a DOD press conference on May 24th (the day before the release of the annual report) Secretary Gates “made a point of reporting happily” that the report on Chinese military power does not contain any “arm-waving” or “exaggeration of the threat.” Xi continues: