Increased military spending by China and India is forcing other Asia-Pacific countries to modernize their armed forces despite the severe impact of the global financial crisis, experts say.
Data from defense research firm Jane’s Information Group estimates total military spending in the region rising year-on-year — from about US$220 billion last year to US$239 billion this year and higher still next year.
Those figures include external defense and homeland security and cover a region stretching from Central Asia to Australia.
“India and China are forcing the countries to think very hard strategically about their defense capabilities,” Jon Grevatt, a regional defense specialist with Jane’s, told reporters from Bangkok.
PRESSURE TO SPEND
He said that although money is tight across the region, “the pressure of not spending on defense is very high due to the considerable military influence that China and India are assuming in this part of the world.”
Even countries not bordering China and India are upgrading their arsenals.
Singapore, despite suffering its worst-ever economic slowdown, will increase its defense spending by an annual 6.0 percent to US$7.53 billion in the new fiscal year starting this month, the government says.
Its neighbors — Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand — are poised to follow suit, Grevatt said.
Research by Jane’s confirms other figures showing China is now the No. 1 military spender in the region, surpassing Japan for the first time least year, when Beijing allocated almost US$59 billion for its defense needs.
China and India have both amassed wealth after years of rapid economic growth.
“They want to use that wealth to develop and procure military capability so that they are perceived as a country that can defend their assets,” Grevatt said.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said the military needed modernization “across the board” as a proposed 15.3 percent rise in defense spending to US$69 billion for this year was unveiled by Beijing.
China has come under strong pressure, especially from the US and Japan, to be more transparent about the nature of its military build-up.
SAME AS WASHINGTON
Alan Dupont, from the University of Sydney’s Center for International Security Studies, said Beijing “should not be criticized for doing exactly what Washington has done, which is to modernize its forces and increase its spending on defense.”
India is also splashing out despite the slowdown, with its defense budget increasing by 24 percent to US$29.4 billion for the fiscal year beginning last Wednesday, the steepest rise since independence in 1947.
The bulk of that money will go towards modernizing its military — the world’s fourth largest.
India’s 1.2-million-strong army is shopping for helicopters, artillery, armor and infantry gear while its air force is expected to hand out a 126-aircraft contract worth almost US$12 billion.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS