[The U.S. military is vastly more powerful than China’s, as Ms. Fu noted. “Fundamentally, this is about the United States worrying that China could catch up and surpass the U.S. in its ability,” she said. “But in fact there is a still a huge gap in ability between the U.S. and China, which is still a developing country.”]
By Jane Perlez
 |
|
Delegates from China’s
People’s Liberation Army arrived for the start of the annual
National People’s
Congress in Beijing on Saturday.
CreditAndy
Wong/Associated Press
|
BEIJING
— China said Saturday that
its military budget would rise by about 7 percent this year, apparently the
lowest increase in seven years, signaling that its leaders do not plan to
engage the United States in an arms race even as President Trump seeks to
bolster the Pentagon’s spending.
Addressing reporters before the start of the
annual National People’s Congress, Fu Ying, a spokeswoman for the legislature,
said the increase would be “about” 7 percent. She said defense spending would
amount to roughly 1.3 percent of China’s gross domestic product.
Last year’s proposed increase was 7.6
percent, though China has yet to release final figures indicating how much was
actually spent. Those figures, and the exact number of this year’s projected
increase, will be revealed in a budget that the government releases on Sunday,
when the national legislature starts its annual full session.
Before 2016, the military budget had received
double-digit increases for six years, a reflection of China’s then-roaring
economy.
Chinese experts said the new budget would
keep military spending roughly in line with the government’s usual formula of
G.D.P. growth plus inflation.
As China’s economy continues to slow, annual
growth in the gross domestic product is expected to be about 6.5 percent.
Inflation hovers around 2 percent. And the government must also find more money
for health care, education and other increasingly expensive social needs.
Chinese and Western military analysts said it
was notable that Mr. Trump’s recent pledge to raise American defense spending
by $54 billion had not spurred China to elevate its own spending further.
Ms. Fu said that China wanted good relations
with the Trump administration but would respond to any challenges.
“President Xi Jinping and President Trump
have had two direct phone calls, and the message was very clear, which is that
there must be more cooperation between China and the United States so we become
good partners,” Ms. Fu said. But she added that China would watch the effects
of Mr. Trump’s global policy changes.
“Of course, everyone hopes that their impact
will be positive, but if there are challenges, China will respond calmly,” Ms.
Fu said.
The U.S. military is vastly more powerful
than China’s, as Ms. Fu noted. “Fundamentally, this is about the United States
worrying that China could catch up and surpass the U.S. in its ability,” she
said. “But in fact there is a still a huge gap in ability between the U.S. and
China, which is still a developing country.”
To emphasize his intent to strengthen the
American military, Mr. Trump visited the country’s new aircraft carrier this
week. The Gerald R. Ford is a nuclear-powered, 100,000-ton floating fortress
due to be commissioned this year and is the first in a new generation of
supercarriers.
The United States has 10 Nimitz-class
supercarriers. In contrast, China is building its first aircraft carrier, a
diesel-propelled vessel, and has one refurbished carrier from Ukraine.
Wang Xiangsui, a retired senior colonel in
China’s Air Force who is now director of the Research Center of Strategic
Issues at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said Mr.
Trump’s plans to increase military spending were unlikely to prod China into
following suit. “I don’t think China will be oversensitive about this,” he
said.
“Despite all the aggressive talk, no one
wants a war,” Mr. Wang said. While the $54 billion increase sounds like a lot,
he added, "the Americans didn’t achieve anything after spending six
trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, who
visited Washington this week and met briefly with Mr. Trump at the White House,
probably had the military budget on his mind as he tried to judge the mood of
the new administration, said Dennis J. Blasko, an American expert on the
Chinese military.
“I’m guessing Yang Jiechi was tasked to make
an assessment of the state of the bilateral relationship to see if there may
need to be a last-minute adjustment in reaction to the requested increase for
the U.S. defense budget,” said Mr. Blasko, a retired army lieutenant colonel
and the author of “The Chinese Army Today.”
Mr. Yang probably found the relationship to
be on a sound enough footing, Mr. Blasko said. “I don’t think they want to get
into a military budget fight with us, not even a rhetorical one.”
Ni Lexiong, a naval expert in Shanghai, said
that if China really felt the need to spend more heavily on the military, it
would not hesitate to do so.
“If China felt threatened, I don’t think
slower economic growth would stop them from spending more on the military,” Mr.
Ni said. “You have seen how the Chinese were willing to starve to build an
atomic bomb. We do not worry about poverty when we think a larger military is
necessary.”
He said the new budget would allow China to
keep modernizing its navy and air force, the two services currently getting the
most attention. The navy launched 22 warships in 2016 to replace old ones, and
the budget would let it keep up that pace this year, he said.
“A chunk of the expenditure will go towards
developing and manufacturing the latest weapons for a stronger air force and
navy,” he said. “I believe this speed of replacement will continue, because it
has been one of China’s long-term growth goals to build a military stronger
than America’s one day, in either quality or quantity.”
While China’s future aircraft carriers are
likely to be nuclear powered, the Chinese Navy will probably be focused on
other, more important areas, said Lyle J. Goldstein, an associate professor at
the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode
Island.
“Chinese submarine development and the
building of destroyers and frigates are likely more expensive and more
consequential for the overall military balance,” he said.
If Mr. Trump were to win his proposed
increase of $54 billion, the American defense budget would be $603 billion,
about 3 percent higher than under former President Barack Obama’s last budget
plan.
The People’s Liberation Army’s official
budget was about $146 billion in 2016. Western groups that study the Chinese military
say that actual spending is roughly 1.2 to 1.5 times greater than the announced
figures.
Using a rough estimate that assumes an
average G.D.P. growth in China of 6.5 percent and a U.S. growth rate of 3
percent, China’s military spending would be expected to surpass America’s
around 2040, said Bonnie S. Glaser, the director of the China Power Project at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Among the issues that Chinese military
planners must deal with is how to handle the retrenchment of 300,000 personnel
announced by President Xi Jinping in 2015, part of an effort to streamline the
P.L.A. into a modern fighting force. Although most of those leaving the army
are mid- to low-level officers and soldiers, the severance costs are expected
to be substantial, retired Chinese officers said.
Chris Buckley contributed reporting. Yufan
Huang contributed research.