Howard 'Buck' McKeon, a Republican congressman, represents a region north of Los Angeles of suburban sprawl, fruit trees, sparse desert - and, as his website notes, a workforce of 20,000 employed by defence industry contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed-Martin.
Pumping up defence spending has been a way of life for McKeon, who has served in Congress since 1993. Now, a wave of Republican wins in last week's US congressional elections may usher him into a role of distinct influence on the issue. McKeon is likely to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
But with a federal budget stretched to the limit, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are winding down, how would he justify the increase he seeks in the Pentagon budget?
In part, by looking east. 'As Chinese naval, air and nuclear power rapidly grows - ours diminishes by comparison,' McKeon said in a statement responding to the Pentagon's annual report this year on Chinese military power. The August report, he said, 'validates the need to modernise and increase our navy's force structure'.
China's growing military might is an issue McKeon has returned to again and again during his tenure on the House Armed Services Committee, which plays an influential role in steering US defence spending.
In a hearing in January, he asked whether a Chinese military defence test was intended to send an 'aggressive signal' in response to US arms sales to Taiwan, warned that Chinese hacking could disrupt US commercial activities and compromise military data, and pointed to PLA naval forces' harassment of a US Navy ship, the Impeccable, as evidence of the 'increasing risks of China's expanding military operations'.
McKeon said he feared the Pentagon would downgrade its threat assessment of China as a way to justify defence cuts.
