China to raise military spending, though less than in recent years

BEIJING — China said Saturday its military budget would rise by about 7 percent this year, apparently the lowest increase in seven years, signaling its leaders do not plan to engage the United States in an arms race even as President Donald 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 military 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 the government releases today, when the national legislature starts its annual full session.

Before 2016, the military budget had received doubledigit 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 GDP 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 Trump’s recent pledge to raise U.S. military spending by $54 billion had not spurred China to elevate its own spending further.

Fu said 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,” Fu said. But she added that China would watch the effects of Trump’s global policy changes.

“Of course, everyone hopes that their impact will be positive, but if there are challenges, China will respond calmly,” Fu said.

The U.S. military is vastly more powerful than China’s, as 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 U.S. military, Trump visited the country’s new aircraft carrier this past week. The Gerald R. Ford is a nuclearpowered, 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 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,” Wang said. While the $54 billion increase sounds like a lot, he added, “the Americans didn’t achieve anything after spending $6 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

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,” 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.”

“If China felt threatened, I don’t think slower economic growth would stop them from spending more on the military,”

– NI LEXIONG, CHINA NAVAL EXPERT