China to increase defence budget to nearly $200 bn
Limited spending is for national security, says state media
BEIJING: China will make an ‘appropriate increase’ in 2019 defence budget—to nearly $200 billion according to some estimates—with a government spokesperson insisting on Monday it will not pose a threat to other countries.
The release of China’s defence budget this week will be closely followed worldwide as Beijing rapidly modernises its massive army, shedding numbers but building aircraft carriers and stealth jets besides shoring up military infrastructure along the border with India. “A proper increase in the defence budget is needed to safeguard national security and transform China’s military with Chinese features,” Zhang Yesui, a spokesperson for National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s rubber-stamp Parliament, said on Monday.
The NPC will commence on Tuesday when Premier Li Keqiang reads out the government work report and announces the economic outlook for 2019. The budget will be scrutinised in India–it is possibly the only official number related to the country’s military available in the public domain. China’s defence budget is already more than thrice that of India, though way below that of the US. US Presi- dent Donald Trump has backed plans to request $750bn from Congress for American defence spending in 2019, Al Jazeera reported.
The Chinese defence outlay grew at 8.1% in 2018, crossing the 1 RMB trillion-mark (around $175 billion) for the first time in 2018. The same year, India’s was around the $ 50 billion.
Beijing doesn’t give a breakdown of its defence budget, raising questions of transparency. It is widely believed that actual spending on defence exceeds the allocation that is made public. Zhang said China only spent about 1.3% of the gross domestic product on its military last year, compared with more than 2% for “certain major developed countries”. Last year, official media said although China’s defence budget had been increased to $175 billion, slightly higher than the previous two years, the growth rate for the third time had dipped into the single digit since 2013, following 7.6%in 2016 and 7% in 2017.
“China's limited defence spending, which is for safeguarding its national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity, poses no threat to any other country,” Xinhua said in a report.
“"Whether a country is a military threat to others or not is not determined by its increase in defence expenditure, but by the foreign and national defence policies it adopts,” Zhang said.