China checks growth in defence expenditure

Beijing: In a bid to shift focus from some glaring paradoxes, Beijing's communist regime has  slowed decades of double digit growth in defence spending by marking an increase of a mere 7.5 per cent for the current fiscal. This is substantially lower than previous years and ends more than two decades of annual double-digit increases.

China army troops

Beijing manipulates currency exchange rates to dominate the world export market and the huge amounts earned through such manipulation, which enable it to create the largest foreign exchange reserve in the world, are then used to finance double digit growth in defence expenditure year after year.

The central government's core defence budget will now rise to $518.6 billion which, according to official spokesman Li Zhaoxing, marks a 7.5 per cent increase on spending.

There has always been a lack of transparency in official statistics which has convinced the world that Beijing also manipulates the figure actually allotted to defence.

The current increase is less than half of the 15.9 per cent average rate of increase in the period 1999-2008, according to figures reported last year by state-run media. It also compares to last year's increase of 14.9 per cent.