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Budget hike to meet training needs: China

Beijing: A day ahead of the opening of the annual session of its Parliament, the National People’s Congress, China announced an almost 18 per cent hike in its defence budget for the coming year.

Military spending in 2008 will reach 417.8 billion yuan ($57.2 billion at the end-2007 exchange rate), a 17.6 per cent increase over 2007, government spokesperson Jiang Enzhu told reporters at a press conference.

The People’s Liberation Army is the world’s largest regular army with some two million soldiers. The country has, in fact, mandated double-digit increases in defence spending every year since the early 1990s, resulting in a military modernisation that has caused some discomfort in the U.S. and Japan in particular.

Last year, the PLA had its biggest military expenditure in five years (also an 18-odd per cent hike over 2006) and went on a spending spree that enabled it to upgrade a missile force capable of shooting down one of its own obsolete satellites. China’s navy has already announced plans to build its first aircraft carrier by 2010.

However, Mr. Jiang insisted that the latest budget hike was “moderate” with the spending coming off a low base and to be used in the main to help boost soldiers’ incomes and training. “These increases are of a compensatory nature to make up for the weak defence foundation,” he said. Mr. Jiang added that China’s military spending was just 1.4 per cent of its gross domestic product last year, compared with 4.6 per cent in the U.S. and 3 per cent in Britain.

He said both as a proportion of public expenditure and as a ratio of the economy, China’s 2007 defence budget ranked behind the U.S., Russia, France and also India.

China’s official budget for 2008, in fact, remains about 10 times less than the nearly $600 billion U.S. President George W. Bush proposed for military spending this year.

China’s announcement of the hike came a day after a Pentagon report expressed concern over China’s growing military might, claiming that its lack of transparency posed risks to regional and international stability.

The report alleged that the true budget for defence in China last year was between $97 billion and $139 billion, well in excess of the official figure of $45 billion.

The Pentagon also raised concerns over China’s development of cruise and ballistic missiles as well as its testing of an anti-satellite weapon last year, stating that its enhanced military capabilities were “changing East Asian military balances” with implications “beyond the Asia-Pacific region.”

The National People’s Congress will formally endorse the 2008 military budget during its annual session, which will last until March 18.

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