China’s Military Budget Boom
China will give its military spending a big boost in 2008. This record amount, $58.8 billion, is an increase of 19.4 percent. China has used its newly-acquired wealth in recent years to upgrade and modernize its military machine, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
The goal: catch up to the West and regional military powers like Japan, Taiwan and Russia. Of course this has caught the eye of U.S. military planners, but the alarming increase is nothing new to them. Many have been saying for quite some time that China aims to build up, project and assert itself regionally in Asia, and eventually throughout the world.
China’s march to global superpowerdom though, will not come without massive increases in military spending. So for many, this is a natural progression, but still alarming nonetheless.
From Bloomberg . . .
The People’s Liberation Army, with 2 million soldiers, had the biggest military expenditure in five years in 2007, going on a spending spree to upgrade a missile force capable of shooting down one of the country’s own obsolete satellites. Government spokesman Qin Gang said in March last year the navy would build its first aircraft carrier by 2010 to expand the defense forces’ operational range into the South China Sea.
“Our purpose is to safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Qin said at a regular news briefing in Beijing today. “It’s justifiable for any country to maintain a reasonable level of military power.”
China’s military is continuing to improve its capacity to conduct long-range missions beyond a confrontation with Taiwan, the Pentagon said yesterday in a report. The Chinese government regards Taiwan as a breakaway province.
Modernizing PLA
The PLA “is pursuing comprehensive transformation from a mass army designed for protracted wars of attrition on its territory to one capable of fighting and winning short-duration wars along its periphery against high-tech adversaries,” according to the report.
Much of China’s modernization drive is aimed at altering the military balance between China and Taiwan in China’s favor, said the congressionally mandated report, which covers 2007.
Although Taiwan has spent more on defense in recent years, reversing the trend of declining defense expenditures, “the balance of forces continues to shift in the mainland’s favor,” the report said. Read more…
7 March, 2008 at 3:58 am
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21 March, 2008 at 3:17 pm
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