DTN News: China Unveils Less Aggressive Defense Budget

DTN News: China Unveils Less Aggressive Defense Budget

Source: DTN News / LA Times By Barbara Demick Reporting from Beijing (NSI News Source Info) BEIJING, CHINA - March 5, 2010: After nearly two decades of double-digit hikes in military spending, Beijing's announcement of a relatively modest 7.5% rise is seen as an apparent bid to assuage wary East Asia neighbors.

China announced Thursday the smallest increase in its defense budget in years, in an apparent attempt to assuage international fears that its military is growing too powerful.

Coming after almost two decades of double-digit hikes, the relatively modest 7.5% increase in the budget to $78 billion also highlights the Chinese leadership's stated commitments to channel funding to social programs.

"China is committed to peace," said Li Zhaoxing, a spokesman for the National People's Congress, where the budget figures were released Thursday.

It is an annual ritual for the military budget to be announced at the opening session of the congress. But as the legislature has no real oversight over the People's Liberation Army, the event is largely about what message the Chinese leadership wishes to send.

Western analysts believe as well that the Chinese government significantly underreports its military spending, so the announced modest increase might in fact be more of a signal than a reflection of reality.

"China's double-digit military spending had led to worries from neighboring countries like Vietnam and India," said Ni Lexiong, a defense analyst at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law. "Both of those countries began to purchase planes and submarines from Russia. There were signs of an arms race in East Asia and that would not be good for China."

A slower pace of military spending increases also reflects the ratcheting down of tensions with Taiwan since the 2008 election there of pro-mainland President Ma Ying-jeou. However, at the same time, the threat of restiveness among Tibetans and the Uighurs of the Xinjiang region in the west has grown.

"The sole purpose of China's military strength is to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Li said in Thursday's news conference.

Other Chinese officials have said that much of the increase in military spending will go to raising salaries for the country's 2.3 million soldiers, whose wages have not kept pace with the rest of the economy.

An analysis by the U.S. Defense Department given to Congress last year estimated that China's officially disclosed military budget grew an average of 12.9% from 1996 to 2008 -- far ahead of the growth of gross domestic product, averaging 9.6% a year.

The Chinese at times have also tried to flaunt their rising military strength, most publicly during the televised spectacle Oct. 1, when the military strutted the latest weaponry past Tiananmen Square in celebration of the 60th anniversary the People's Republic of China.