Monday, March 7, 2011

China Raises Defense Budget for 2011

The Chinese government announced on Friday that it plans to increase its defense budget by 12.7% for 2011. The planned increase the second spike in military spending in many years; China increased its defense budget spending by 7.5% in 2010 from the previous year. Li Zhaoxing, a former foreign minister for the Chinese government, states that China plans to increase its spending by 67.6 billion yuan to make it a grand total of 601 billion yuan, which is the same as $91 billion. Li states that "the limited military strength of China is solely for safeguarding its national sovereignty and territorial integrity and would not pose a threat to any country." The stated reasons for the defense spending increase is to improve China's armament, training and human resource development and to raise living standards for China's armed forces. Li also stresses that "there is no such thing as a so-called hidden military expenditure in China", so the government is not under-reporting the amount of money it plans to spend on defense.
Do you guys think that it's a good idea for China to increase its defense spending? I think this may cause tension as the increase could be seen as a threat to the US and other countries, but what are some other outcomes that you guys predict for the increased spending?

2 comments:

Manny said...

As you stated Tony, what i see here is China treating its soldiers better. Li Zhaoxing's just feeling a little generous and wants raise his army's living standards. When he highlights these points it definitely is a great idea to be raising his military spending. Raising the defense spending does not necessarily mean that they will pump in more investments into nuclear weapons, increasing defense (and of course inciting aggressiveness), compared to the U.S. who seemingly only talks about weapons. When the U.S. discusses defense spending, it always constitutes the idea of being a world power and if we decrease spending things would seem like we are stepping down from that position. So just because we view it that way, China's increase in spending won't make such a big impact on foreign countries, meaning that it should not seem as such a big threat especially when they're talking about spending on their army's living standards.

Dan Fu said...

I do not feel that this increase of expenditures on China's military will cause much tension between the United States and other countries, especially with increased spending in military often acting as a PR thing. In modern times, all-out war has really become a relic of the past due to MAD, so my guess is that the chinese government is simply trying to increase it's impressiveness to the global community, appear strong to its own people, and to increase it's bargaining power elsewhere.