China to Increase Military Spending

China to Increase Military Spending
Rise of 17 Percent Continues Decade-Long Military Buildup
By Jill Drew
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 4, 2008

BEIJING, March 5 -- China announced Tuesday that it will again sharply increase its military spending this year, budgeting a 17.6 percent rise that is roughly equal to last year's increase.

Disclosure of plans for a $59 billion outlay in 2008 followed a U.S. report Monday that raised questions about China's rapidly increasing military budget, and less than three weeks before a presidential election in Taiwan, the island over which China claims sovereignty but which is self-governed.

A Chinese spokesman said the country's decade-long military buildup does "not pose a threat to any country," but he warned that relations with Taiwan in a "crucial stage" and the island would "surely pay a dear price" if it were to take steps that China viewed as a declaration of independence.

A $59 billion budget is still a fraction of what the United States spends each year on its armed forces. President Bush last month requested $515 billion to fund the Pentagon, an amount that does not include spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States has pressed China to be more open about its intentions as the pace and scope of its military capabilities increase. At a Monday briefing at the Pentagon, David Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, reiterated the U.S. view that China's defense establishment still severely underreports total spending and has not been clear about its intentions.

"China's military buildup has been characterized by the opacity," Sedney told reporters, and "by the inability of people in the region and around the world to really know what ties together the capabilities that China's acquiring with the intentions it has."

The Pentagon report said China's near-term focus remains on preparing for potential problems in the Taiwan Strait. But China's nuclear force modernization, its growing arsenal of advanced missiles, and its forays into space and cyber-space technologies are changing military balances in Asia and beyond, the report concluded.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference in Beijing that the United States was stuck in a "Cold War mentality" and that the annual Pentagon report on China's military power, mandated by Congress since 1999, "is a serious distortion of facts and attempts to interfere in China's internal affairs."

Jiang Enzhu, spokesman for China's National People's Congress, said the extra money in China's 2008 military budget would fund only a "moderate increase" in weapons purchases. The bulk of the increase would go for higher salaries for military personnel, the rising cost of oil supplies and for training programs, he said. He noted the country has a long-held plan to modernize its forces and that the increasing pace of spending is still below the country's rapid economic growth rate.

Jiang said that between 2003 and 2007, China's national defense spending increased by an annual average of 15.8 percent, while government revenue over the same period increased by an annual average of 22.1 percent. He said China's defense spending was the equivalent of 1.4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product last year. By comparison, U.S. spending was 4.6 percent of GDP, he said, and Britain's was 3 percent.

Although the Pentagon report raised questions about China's military intentions, Sedney told reporters Monday that he had just returned from a round of talks with his Chinese counterparts that were "surprisingly successful." In addition to the agreement to establish a military telephone link between the two countries, announced last week, he said, the two sides agreed to move forward in a dialogue on nuclear strategy and policy.