Politics and China's defense budget

Prior to his partial withdrawal from leadership circles, Jiang will painstakingly contemplate how to maintain his own power and authority. In this game, the role of the military may be a deciding factor. Jiang has therefore been very generous in recent years with the national defense budget. He intends to use money to stabilize the morale of the troops and then proceed to make the military stand on his side in order to ensure the continuation of his policies. This is the design behind his repeated emphasis on "absolute leadership of the party over the military."

In the recent meetings of the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (政協), representatives from the military changed their uncompromising stance of last year and repeatedly indicated their determination to "unify peacefully" with Taiwan. This reflects the fact that within the military, the opposition between those who advocate war with Taiwan and those who advocate a peaceful solution to the Taiwan problem, will to a large degree be decided by Beijing's political policies. And sometimes in order to adhere to a political policy, economic compensation is unavoidable. Thus we can predict that Beijing's military expenditures will continue to grow substantially. The Taiwan problem is only one factor.

Wang Dan was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations in Beijing. He is a graduate student at Harvard University.

Translated by Ethan Harkness