China’s defence budget set to go up 17.6 per cent for 2008
08 Mar 2008
Beijing: Mainland China plans to increase its defence budget by 17.6 per cent this year, with cost going up primarily to adjust for larger benefits for its military personnel, a senior official has said.
The planned allocation for the People's Liberation Army this year is 417.77 billion yuan ($58.79 billion), up 62.379 billion yuan ($8.23 billion) from actual military spending last year, Jiang Enzhu, spokesman for the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), told a press conference.
According to Jiang, the increased amount would be used mainly to raise the pay of service personnel and offset the impact of price hikes. Larger outlays are planned for education and training.
Jiang also said that military equipment would be "moderately" upgraded to enhance information technology capabilities.
Jiang dubbed the budget growth a "compensatory" rise, given the low base and the rapid and steady growth of the country's economy and fiscal revenues in recent years. Elaborating further Jiang pointed out that between 1979 to 1989, defence expenditure registered an average annual decrease of 5.83 per cent. He also said that its growth in recent years is still far below the increase in fiscal revenues.
Official figures show China saw an average annual rise of 15.8 per cent in military spending from 2003 to 2007, while fiscal revenues grew 22.1 per cent on average per year during the same period.
Jiang also pointed out that China's military spending remains low especially when compared to other countries, especially the big powers. Last year, for example, he said, China's military expenditure accounted for only 1.4 per cent of GDP, the lowest compared with 4.6 per cent in the United States, 3 per cent in Britain, 2 per cent in France, 2.63 per cent in Russia and 2.5 per cent in India.
He said that China's national defence policy is defensive in nature.
"China's limited military capability is solely for the purpose of safeguarding independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and will not pose a threat to any country," he said.
On the issue of Taiwan, Jiang said that Taiwan authorities were destined to pay a "dear price" if they took the dangerous path of independence.
He said the so-called "referendum on UN membership" would seriously harm peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits and the Asia-Pacific region.
Meanwhile, Chinese commentators on military matters said that the Chinese army, now in a critical "transitional" period, would naturally need more money for high-tech upgrades. They pointed out that China still lagged behind developed countries by "one or two generations" in major military equipment.
Military analysts around the world have pointed out that China's official military budget and actual military budget are never the same. In the absence of a government that can be called accountable, items are either budgeted under different ministries or simply not reported truthfully.
The US Pentagon, which devotes a certain amount of resources in analysing Chinese defence spending claims that Chinese defence budget remains the second largest in the world.
The prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) puts the argument a little differently by placing China behind the United States, Britain and France in total defence spending, but second to the United States in purchasing power parity at $188 billion to Washington's $529 billion.
