[In a keynote address to an annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, Premier Li Keqiang said the country faced “profound changes in the national security environment,” necessitating a stronger military.]
By Simon Denyer
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China is rapidly
modernizing its forces in an attempt to match the U.S. might
in Asia. (Jason Aldag/The
Washington Post)
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BEIJING
— China’s government said
Monday that it will boost its defense spending by 8.1 percent this year, the
biggest increase in three years, even as it insists that it poses no threat to
other countries.
President Xi Jinping is attempting to modernize
China’s military, vowing to turn it into a “world-class force” that is capable
of fighting and winning wars.
China’s defense spending is still about a
quarter of U.S. levels, but its long-term growth has rattled some neighboring
countries, especially given Beijing’s more assertive enforcement of territorial
claims.
In a keynote address to an annual meeting of
the National People’s Congress, Premier Li Keqiang said the country faced
“profound changes in the national security environment,” necessitating a
stronger military.
As a proportion of the economy, China spends
about 1.9 percent of its gross domestic product on the military, compared with
about 3.3 percent for the United States, according to the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute. The 2018 spending increase would
outpace China’s economic growth.
Zhang Yesui, a vice foreign minister and
spokesman for the National People’s Congress, said China’s defense spending was
still lower than that of other major countries on a per capita basis.
“China is committed to a path of peaceful
development, and China pursues a defense policy that is defensive in nature,”
he said at a news conference. “China’s development will not pose a threat to
other countries.”
But Andrew Erickson, a professor at the Naval
War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute in Newport, R.I., said it was
revealing that military spending would outpace China’s economic growth.
“This shows that Xi’s grand strategy to ‘make
China great again’ includes not only a ‘China dream’ generally but also a
‘strong military dream’ specifically,” he said.
Erickson said China has the world’s
second-largest defense budget after the United States, enabling it to achieve
the biggest and fastest shipbuilding expansion in modern history; the world’s
largest navy, coast guard and maritime militia by number of ships; and the
world’s largest conventional ballistic and cruise missile force.
In its National Defense Strategy issued at the
end of last year, the Pentagon accused China and Russia of being “revisionist
powers” that want to shape the world in accordance with their authoritarian
models of government and pose the central challenge to U.S. prosperity and
security. It also accused China of seeking “Indo-Pacific regional hegemony,” of
intimidating its neighbors while militarizing the disputed waters of the South
China Sea and of wanting to establish global preeminence at the expense of the
United States in the longer term.
But Chinese officials and analysts played
down the threat.
Zhang said the uptick in defense spending is
partly to compensate for past insufficient spending and is mainly being used to
upgrade equipment, better the lives of service members and improve training conditions
for troops.
Song Xiaojun, a Beijing-based military
commentator, said the spending increase was partly to make up for personnel
laid off as part of a recent reduction in the armed forces by 300,000 troops,
while Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan, vice president of the China Strategic Culture
Promotion Association, said the budget was normal for maintaining the army and
did not signify a preparation for war.
“China has not had any wars in the past 30
years,” he said. “It’s building its military to ensure its own safety, so
foreign powers don’t need to worry.”
Ni Lexiong, a military expert at the Shanghai
University of Political Science and Law, said the increase was modest in the
face of rising costs, tensions on the Korean Peninsula and a border standoff
with India. “Considering such a situation, this symbolic increase is equal to
no increase,” Ni said.
Shirley Feng and Liu Yang contributed to this
report.
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