China's plans to fatten its military budget this year are part of a long-term pattern but they will still worry Taiwan and likely stiffen US opposition to Europe lifting an arms export embargo on China, analysts say.
China announced last Friday that it would boost military spending 12.6 percent this year to 247.7 billion yuan (US$29.9 billion).
Jiang Enzhu (
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
By comparison, the US defense budget is about US$400 billion this year.
"Although a 12.6 percent increase sounds quite substantial, it is not extraordinary for China," said Christan Lemiere, analyst at London-based defense analysts Jane's.
"Over the last 15 years, it increased its defense budget by double digit figures every year [except] one," Lemiere said.
Because of a rapidly rising cost of living in China, Beijing had to fund higher defence pay and the introduction of social security for retirees, he said.
However, it was important to note that the budget excluded many items affecting regional security such as overseas procurement of defense equipment.
In any case, the official Chinese defense budget was not believed to represent actual military spending; many analysts believed the true figure was two to three times larger, he said.
According to Washington, Lemiere said, Chinese military spending amounted to US$50 billion to US$70 billion last year.
"Rising Chinese defense expenditures [are] a concern for regional powers -- Taiwan, India, Japan -- and the United States but I don't think this particular announcement will have much of an effect," Lemiere said.
"People have been expecting China to increase its budget as they have been doing for the 15 years. There will be no direct reaction to it but obviously Taiwan will try to continue to source [equipment] from overseas, primarily the United States," he said.
The Chinese announcement "may lead to some rhetoric from the US about the embargo," Lemiere said.
US President George W. Bush, on a visit to Brussels last month, voiced "deep concern" at EU plans to lift a 15-year arms embargo on China, despite a European scheme to toughen a voluntary code of conduct on such exports.
EU leaders have indicated that the arms embargo is likely to be lifted under the bloc's current Luxembourg president, which ends in June.
The US says this will give China access to high-tech military know-how and firepower that would threaten Taiwan and shift the strategic balance in East Asia.
"I assume that the people who are already opposed to lifting this arms embargo will use this as an additional reason for attacking this decision," said Lu Yiyi, analyst at the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs.
But much would depend on how China used the money.
"It depends on exactly how the additional money will be spent ... if they say it is for new uniforms for the army, [for] improving salaries for army officers, then it is very different from purchasing new equipment," Lu said.
China had previously said it would use the money to fund demobilizing troops. Last Friday, the NPC spokesman said Beijing would demobilize 200,000 soldiers this year.
The People's Liberation Army is the world's largest standing army, with some 2.5 million members.
New tensions with Taiwan were "inevitable," Li said.
"Inevitably, because there is an increase in military budget, Taiwan will feel alarmed," the analyst said.
The NPC is expected to pass legislation aimed at preventing Taiwan from declaring formal independence.
Francois Godement, director of the Asia Centre at the French Institute of International Relations, noted that the Chinese military budget had been growing every since 1989, except for 2003.
Every military update -- stronger navy, battlefield electronics, a new paratrooper division -- "indicates that Taiwan is the target," he said.
"But, because of China's heavy dependence on energy and its great export and import needs, all things that travel by sea, it is normal that China should raise its naval profile," he said.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS