China's arms spending up by 11.2%; goes past $100bn mark

BEIJING: The Chinese government on Sunday announced $106.4 billion (670.27 billion yuan) expenditure on defence, which is three times India's budgetary allocation for 2011-12. The budgetary estimates, which will soon be approved by the National People's Congress, is "reasonable and appropriate" in light of China's rapid economic development and steady increase in revenues, said NPC spokesman Li Zhaoxing. This is the first time the Chinese defence budget has topped the $100bn mark.

Li, who is a former foreign minister, said China's main military spending apart from on equipment is on services, training, and maintenance. "China is committed to peaceful development and follows a national defence policy that is defensive in nature. China's military will not in the least pose a threat to other countries," Li said.

The share of defence expenditure in the country's gross domestic product has dipped from 1.33% in 2008 to 1.28% in 2011, Li said, and added, "The US and UK spend more than 2% of their GDP."

Reacting to this, Maj Gen (retd) Dipankar Banerjee of the Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies said, "This is very high allocation if you consider that nearly 50% of Chinese military spending is not shown in the defence budget." A substantial part of expenses by China's domestic public security bureau and infrastructure investments by provincial governments have military purposes, he said.

The country's defence spending grew by a low rate of 7.5% in 2010 before rising to 12.7% in 2011, when the budget was put at $91 billion. The 11.2% increase comes at a time when Chinese authorities have announced plans to drastically slow down growth rate to 7.5% of GDP as compared to 9.2% in 2011.

The official media quoted Wen Bing, a researcher with the People's Liberation Army Military Science Academy, as saying, "The Chinese government will not, as some foreign analysts suggest, make a drastic response to, or overreact to, the so-called worsening of global security."