China yesterday announced a 7.5 percent increase in military spending for this year, lower than last year as the nation faces an economic slowdown, but still likely to make Asian neighbors nervous.
It is working to provide the 2 million-strong Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with state-of-the-art hardware, spending heavily on stealth warplanes, aircraft carriers and other weaponry.
Beijing has also stepped up its rhetoric against any independence movements in Taiwan and continues to assert its vast territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea and East China Sea.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The government is to spend 1.19 trillion yuan (US$177.6 billion) on defense this year, after it increased its outlay by 8.1 percent to 1.11 trillion yuan last year, according to a government report presented at the start of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress.
Boasting the world’s largest army, China’s military spending is second only to the US, which budgeted US$716 billion for defense this year.
China has not posted double-digit spending increases since 2015.
The Chinese government would make “further efforts to ensure the political loyalty of the armed forces,” Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) said in a speech to the nearly 3,000 members of the legislature, stressing the “absolute party leadership” over the military.
Li said the government would “strengthen military training under combat conditions and firmly protect China’s sovereignty, security and development interests.”
The lower spending increase comes as the nation’s economy is slowing, with the government setting a lower economic growth target of 6 to 6.5 percent.
“China’s military expenditure is coordinated with annual Chinese GDP growth,” said James Char, a military expert at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
“China has other national priorities and an over-militarized national economy can deprive the government of much-needed resources, as what had happened to the former USSR,” Char said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who has vowed to turn the PLA into a “world class” military by mid-century, has repeatedly called on the army to be combat-ready.
“In Taiwan, you can legitimately worry about the Chinese budget increases, because they coincide with a more aggressive posture towards Taipei,” said Barthelemy Courmont, Asia researcher at the Institute for Strategic and Foreign Relations in Paris.
A photograph released on Twitter on Monday by ImageSat International showed that four Xian H-6 bombers from the People’s Liberation Army Air Force had been forward-deployed to the Xingning Air Base in Guangdong Province, only 450km from Taiwan.
Ministry of National Defense spokesman Major General Chen Chung-chi (陳中吉) yesterday reassured the public that the ministry has round-the-clock surveillance on military deployments or movements by China.
China also faces competing claims in the South China Sea from Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia. It also has a territorial dispute with historic rival Japan in the East China Sea.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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