BEIJING (AFP) – China’s defense budget increase is “appropriate and reasonable” and aimed at addressing “complex security challenges”, a spokesman for the country’s Stamp Assembly said on Saturday.
Wang Chao declined to say whether the growth rate to be announced at the opening of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress on Sunday will be higher or lower than last year’s 7.1%.
But the defense budget’s share of GDP remains stable, and China’s military modernization “does not pose a threat to any country,” he said.
“On the contrary, it is nothing more than a positive force to safeguard regional stability and world peace,” Wang said at a press conference.
“Increased defense spending is necessary to meet complex security challenges and enable China to fulfill its responsibilities as a great power,” he said.
“China’s defense spending… is lower than the global average and the increase is appropriate and reasonable,” Wang said.
China’s budget last year was 1.45 trillion yuan (he was US$229 billion at the time), nearly double the 2013 budget.
In addition to the world’s largest standing army, China has the world’s largest navy and recently launched a third aircraft carrier. It boasts a vast arsenal of missiles, along with stealth aircraft, nuclear-capable bombers, advanced surface ships, and nuclear-powered submarines.
China has already established a foreign military base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, and is remodeling the Reem Naval Base in Cambodia. This could lead to at least a semi-permanent existence in the Gulf of Thailand, across the disputed South China Sea.
The modernization effort has raised concerns among the United States and its allies, particularly Taiwan, an island self-governing democracy that claims China, to be brought under control by force if necessary.
This has led to steady sales of weapons to the island, including ground systems, air defense missiles and F-16 fighter jets. Taiwan itself has also recently extended its conscription period from her four months to her one year and revitalized its own defense industry, including building submarines first.
Although no longer increasing at the double-digit annual percentage rates of past decades, China’s defense spending has remained relatively high despite skyrocketing levels of government debt and an economy that grew last year at its second-lowest level in at least four decades.
The government says most of the spending increases will go toward improving welfare for troops. Observers say the budget omits much of China’s spending on weaponry, most of which is developed domestically after years of large-scale imports from Russia.
China’s huge capacity and Russia’s massive expenditures of artillery shells and other materiel in its war on Ukraine have raised concerns in the U.S. and elsewhere that Beijing may provide Moscow with military assistance.
Speaking at the G-20 meeting in India on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that were China to engage in “material, lethal support for Russia’s aggression or were to engage in the systematic evasion of sanctions to help Russia, that would be a serious problem for our countries.”
“We’ve not seen it do that yet, but we’ve seen it considering that proposition and we made it clear that engaging in these behaviors would have consequences,” said Blinken.
