China's military is not happy. And it has not been shy to show the world, in particular the United States, its displeasure in recent weeks.

Through newspaper and magazine articles in the state media, senior Chinese military officers have been warning their Pacific rival that they are sufficiently irked by what they perceive to be American sabre-rattling in the region.

The comments ranged from barely concealed hostility to outright anger. Diplomatic they were not.

A case in point was the verbal broadside last week from Major-General Luo Yuan, who lashed out at the US for planning to deploy the aircraft carrier USS George Washington in the Yellow Sea for joint drills with South Korea.

He wrote in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Daily: 'If no one harms me, I harm no one, but if someone harms me, I must harm them.' (ren bu fan wo, wo bu fan ren, ren nuo fan wo, wo bi fan ren)

The 16-word warning has often been used by the PLA to justify its actions. Notably, the same words were chanted by soldiers during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

Gen Luo was backed by another retired officer, Rear Admiral Yang Yi, who in separate articles in the PLA Daily and the China Daily castigated the Americans for their 'chaotic' approach to relations with China. Washington will inevitably pay dearly for this, he added ominously.

The tough rhetoric came in the wake of recent displays of naval might by both countries in the South China Sea, a body of water which has become an arena of sorts following US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks last month that it was part of America's 'national interest'.

Her words clearly had an effect in stirring up the Chinese: Shortly after, the PLA navy held high-profile drills there, flexing its muscles with warships and a barrage of missile tests.

What was even more telling was that the exercises were supervised by PLA Chief of General Staff Chen Bingde and naval commander Wu Shengli. Both are members of the Central Military Commission, the highest decision-making body of the Chinese military.

Such strong words and actions from the PLA, when juxtaposed against the less bellicose response from the Chinese government to Mrs Clinton's comments, have led to questions as to whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) still controls the gun, a pecking order laid down years ago by chairman Mao Zedong.

Has the gun grown in strength compared to the party, with an increasing divergent view, usually hardline, from those who reside in the politicians' compound at Zhongnanhai?

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates seemed to think so. Before he arrived in Singapore for the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in June, he said: 'I am disappointed that the PLA leadership has not seen the same potential benefits from this kind of a military-to-military relationship as their own leadership and the US seem to think would be of benefit...my opinion is that the PLA is significantly less interested in developing this relationship than the political leadership in the country.'

But analysts in China disagreed.

'The CCP and the PLA still share the same voice,' said Renmin University's Professor Pang Zhongying.

'They just choose to express it slightly differently. But there is no doubt that the Chinese military obeys the party, and that the party controls the gun.'

A look at the PLA's comments in the media in the past two decades suggests that Prof Pang is right.

Instead of departing from script, the Chinese military is often the means by which the CCP tests the reactions of friends and foes as it floats trial balloons and fires shots across the bow on strategic matters.

In 1995, for example, China's former chief of military intelligence, General Xiong Guangkai, was reported to have told former US ambassador Chas Freeman: 'And finally, you do not have the strategic leverage that you had in the 1950s when you threatened nuclear strikes on us. You were able to do that because we could not hit back. But if you hit us now, we can hit back. So you will not make those threats. In the end, you care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei.'

Analysts believe the comment was sanctioned by the CCP's top echelon, using the PLA as a convenient conduit to send hardline messages which politicians are ill-placed to deliver.

At around the same time, China also lobbed missiles into the Taiwan Strait to dissuade Taiwanese from voting for pro-independence Lee Teng-hui in the island's first presidential election.

Strategic games aside, there are other narrower, possible interests behind the recent provocative statements from PLA officers.

One is the growing commercialisation of the Chinese media, which has meant that sensationalist and nationalist views find a ready audience.

'Academics and PLA officers have seized this opportunity to write books advocating controversial positions in order to make money,' Washington-based security expert Bonnie Glaser told Asia Times Online. 'Several PLA officers appear as pundits on Chinese TV programmes and write for newspapers, viewing this as a means to promote their hardline views, but also to supplement their salaries.'

The PLA also has its own vested interest in creating a ruckus: It wants a bigger budget. With China's next Five-Year Programme, for 2011-2015, just months away, it is no coincidence the PLA has become more assertive.

'Part of the reason is that it is good for the military to justify more resources, as happens with almost all militaries,' analyst Li Mingjiang from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies told The Straits Times.

So it will be no surprise if Chinese military officers continue to hit out at the US and other foreign bogeys in the coming months. But unless top civilian leaders jump in, it would be safe to say that China is not that unhappy - yet.