This BBC Online article looks at China's growing military power and resultant self-confidence. It was published Saturday, but has already been overstripped by events.

China's national legislature voted almost unanimously Monday to approve the use of force against Taiwan if it tries to pursue formal independence.

That cheery notion aside, here's an excerpt from the BBC story:

China, for example, has long possessed ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. But in the last few years China has developed a system to launch those missiles from trucks.

The system is called a Transporter-Erector-Launcher, or TEL. The missile it carries is called a Dongfeng-31. "Dongfeng" means East Wind.

The TEL not only transports the DF-31. The missile is erected and then launched from the vehicle. The entire system is mobile.

"This means in a crisis China can disperse its ballistic missile forces and have a high degree of confidence some of it would survive a pre-emptive strike by a foreign power," says James Mulvenon, who heads a new private think tank in Washington, the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis (Cira).

US analysts believe the DF-31 will be deployed in the next few years. They also believe the missile has the range to hit the north-western United States.

"This in a broader sense gives China a true survivable nuclear deterrent and the confidence that goes along with that in terms of its military policy and the conduct of its national security policy abroad," says Mr Mulvenon.

The article goes on to say that Porter Goss, the CIA's director, thinks China is gearing up for a potential confrontation with the U.S. over Taiwan.

I suspect China and the U.S. will be butting heads a lot in this century.

As I noted in my End of Suburbia post, India, China and the U.S. may well find themselves in competition for a declining resource: oil.

If that happens, two outcomes are likely:

1. Oil's price goes way up.

2. Wars are fought to control its supply.

Here's another graf from the BBC piece: China's new confidence will show itself in the coming years. We will probably see the Chinese navy moving to secure sea lanes and oil supplies from the Middle East.

I forgot a third option, which  is that technology rescues us from our oil addiction. But that isn't on the horizon.

In any event, in the late 1990s, conservative foreign policy writers were publishing books like The Coming Conflict with China. Time to dust off that old copy, I say!

And you gotta wonder if the vaunted ballistic missile defence program is really aimed at Beijing and not Pyongyang.