The long-awaited report on Chinese military power was to be presented to the US Congress on Tuesday, casting a spotlight on an issue that has been a source of growing US concern as well as tension with Beijing.

Its release comes only days after a Chinese general warned that Beijing would retaliate with nuclear weapons if the US military intervened in a military conflict over Taiwan.

Rumsfeld described the report as a "factual presentation" of China's growing military budget and its acquisition of substantial quantities of modern weapons from countries like Russia. He said the report reflected the thinking of the Defense Department, State Department and the National Security Council.

"It clearly points up the reason the president and the United States government has been urging the EU to not lift the arms embargo on the Peoples Republic of China," Rumsfeld told a press conference with visiting Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski.

Under US pressure, the European Union has put off a decision on whether to end an embargo on sales of advanced weapons to China that was imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters.

Rumsfeld said the report describes China's efforts to make the Peoples Liberation Army smaller, more mobile and more capable of projecting force than the gargantuan force that unleashed human wave assaults on US forces in Korea more than half a century ago.

The defense secretary declined comment on US concerns about the buildup or say what it is doing in response.

The report, he said, "reflects the behavior in the collective decisions that are being made in that country with respect to military investments and acquisitions."

However, he predicted that China will be confronted with a dilemma in the years ahead between a political system that is not free and the need for openness to compete successfully in the world economy.

"And that suggests to me as we go through the coming years there will be a tension between the two, and something will give," he said.

"To the extent the vertical system does not give it will inhibit the growth of their economy, and the ultimately the growth of their military capabilities," he said.

"To the extent the political system gives and they take a path that increasingly reflects the reality that a country that fully participates in the world is going to be most successful if they have a relatively free political and a reflatively free economic system, then that would be a good thing for the world," he said.

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