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Beijing says PLA budget is for defensive purposes

China will raise its heavily scrutinized defense spending by about a fifth this year, a top official said yesterday.

Jiang Enzhu (姜恩柱), spokesman for China's National People's Congress, said that China adhered to a path of peaceful development and said the money would be used to raise the pay of service personnel, improve training and upgrade military equipment.

"China pursues a national defense policy which is defensive in nature," Jiang told a news conference. "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."

The planned allocation for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) for this year was 417.769 billion yuan (US$58.76 billion), up 17.6 percent on last year.

US officials have said China's growing might is aimed at Taiwan.

This year's rise follows a 17.8 percent increase in defense spending for last year, its largest rise in a decade, when the official outlay reached 350.92 billion yuan.

Jiang said that China's spending on defense was increasing at a much lower rate than the pace of increase in government revenues and accounted for 1.4 percent of its GDP -- less, he said, than that of the US, the UK or India.

But international experts estimate China's true spending on the PLA could be as much as triple the stated figure.

On Monday, the Pentagon said China was developing weapons that would disable its enemies' space technology in a conflict and warned that the balance of forces in the Taiwan Strait continued to shift in China's favor.

Xu Guangyu (徐光宇), a former PLA officer who now works in the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, said the budget increase was needed and was no cause for alarm.

The Bush administration last month requested US$515.4 billion defense budget for next fiscal year.

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