China Pumping New Money into Its Military
The Washington Post reports that China will increase its military spending by some 18 percent this year, which compares unfavorably with the Pentagon’s projected 10-11 percent increase in defense spending for FY 2008. The announced 18% increase puts official numbers for Chinese military spending for 2007 at $49 billion, but the Pentagon believes that figure is just one-third of total defense-related spending, including technology and equipment.
US defense spending reached $632 billion for FY 2007, or more than four times the highest-end estimates of Chinese military spending.
Newly appointed Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, in China at the time of the announcement, was the first US official to respond, saying that “we think it’s important in our dialogue that we understand what China’s plans and intentions are.” Negroponte’s diplomatic approach prioritizes greater transparency to better understand China’s actual expenditures (i.e. personnel training and wages versus high-tech C4ISR equipment or nuclear submarines).
The Pentagon should not be expected to take the news as lightly. It is inclined to believe that increases in China’s military budget elevate the risk of confrontation between our two countries.
We hedge against China (by increasing military spending) and they hedge against us (by increasing military spending). Sounds a lot like escalation, and I fear that history may be repeating itself.
UPDATE: A number of other China bloggers have picked up this story. China Confidential asks, “Why does a peacefully rising power need to be able to project its power–militarily–around the world?” and while I don’t agree with his conclusions, the post is well worth reading. Angry Chinese Blogger provides great background on China’s military spending and some intriguing quotes from a Foreign Ministry spokesman comparing the US to a sexual predator/nosy neighbor (no big difference there).
March 5, 2007 at 2:06 am
I agree with some of the things China Confidential is saying. I think they are arming up so to “protect” Taiwan and since they see us bogged down in Iraq and they have seen our military games but we haven’t yet seen theirs…yep, there is definitely something up. I have been watching this for a while and it is worrisome…very worrisome.
March 5, 2007 at 2:29 am
Lisa,
I certainly agree that China is increasing its military spending so as to protect itself from any potential Taiwan scenario. But I think it’s specious reasoning to use this fact to conclude that China is deceptive and dangerous, i.e. not pursuing a peaceful rise. In fact, China has always been rather open about its right to invade Taiwan under certain conditions; and the US is mandated under law to aid Taiwan in such an event (which Negroponte invoked yesterday in China, along with the fact that the US officially support the One-China policy).
In my opinion it’s not about whether you agree with China’s policy towards Taiwan. Assuming Taiwan is the primary and/or sole reason for China’s increased military spending, the world should at the least feel it has a pretty good sense of China’s intentions. Which should obviate the need for threatening comments from the Pentagon about China’s “military buildup.” But in reality much of the administration despises the One-China policy and supports a free and independent Taiwan.
Only two things will make that dream reality: time or war.
March 5, 2007 at 9:52 am
Once again, western media is barking at the wrong tree.
Anti-satellite missile, new fighter jet, new nuclear submarine, all those cost money. So there’s your 18% increase in military spending.
If I were a politician in West, I’ll be more worried about China 41.7% increase in educational investment, Chinese R&D expenditure replaced Japan as being No. 2 in the world, Chinese products climb up the value chain much more rapidly than most expected, etc.
But that’s just not as sexy as “escalation of military build-up.”
Unless U.S. election electorate send the right message to the next President, I’m afraid American hegemony will end up much sooner than we anticipate. Not 2040, when Chinese GDP estimated to exceed that of US. The day of reckoning may come as early as 2020. But alas, US politicians, media pundits and average Joe seems to be in a state of denial. In that sense, 2008 Presidential election is in indeed critical for the future fortune of United States.
(Chinese educational investment is expected to increase 41.7%, see
http://english.people.com.cn/200703/05/eng20070305_354303.html )
March 6, 2007 at 2:53 am
{China’s Generals Say Increase in Defense Spending Isn’t Enough
By Allen T. Cheng
March 6 (Bloomberg) — China’s military spending, now at its fastest pace in five years, has failed to raise salaries enough to attract the best candidates to serve in the armed forces, military officers said.
“We need much, much more,” said Xing Shucheng, a lieutenant general, while attending the annual meeting of China’s National People’s Congress yesterday in Beijing. “When you look at the daunting task of defending the nation and reuniting with Taiwan, the increase isn’t enough.”
The budget of the People’s Liberation Army will increase 17.8 percent to 350 billion yuan ($45 billon) this year, about 1.6 percent of China’s economy, according to a March 4 announcement. The money will be spent on salaries, equipment and new weapons, Congress spokesman Jiang Enzhu said at news conference two days ago.
China’s defense spending has brought calls from the U.S. for the government to be more transparent about its military plans. The U.S. wants to intensify its talks with China to “have a better idea of what China has in mind with this military modernization and buildup,” Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said during a visit to Beijing over the weekend.
China’s generals have a legitimate complaint, said Andrew Yang, a Taipei-based defense analyst. A Chinese soldier earns a starting wage of 200 yuan a month, while a colonel earns between 3,000 to 4,000 yuan a month, roughly one-fifth of salaries earned by officers in Taiwan’s military and a 10th of those in the U.S., Yang said.
“A general in the PLA earns between 4,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan, while their counterparts in Taiwan earn close to 30,000 yuan,” said Yang, secretary general of Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies. “The best talents are not joining the PLA. It’s becoming such a problem that it’s affecting morale and the commitment of the troops.”
Powerful Army
China will build a “solid national defense system and a powerful people’s army” and “carry out the transformation from military training based on mechanized warfare to military training for warfare under conditions of greater information technology,” Premier Wen Jiabao told the congress yesterday.
Wen said a strong defense underpins China’s ambitions to reunify with Taiwan, a self-ruled island since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 when the Communist Party took power on the mainland forcing the former ruling Nationalist Party to flee to Taiwan.
Private company salaries in China have taken off far faster than those in the military, said Ellen Zhou Lan, chief executive of Ellen Hunter Consulting Co., a Beijing-based executive recruiting company. “We’ve seen double-digit growth of salaries in China’s private sector and mostly single digit growth of salaries in the PLA and PLA-affiliated companies,” she said.
Best Workers
An engineer with 10 years of experience might earn as much as 10,000 yuan a month working for a private Chinese company and twice that for a multinational such as General Electric Co., compared with 3,000 yuan working in the PLA, she said.
“The multinationals are attracting the cream of the crop in China, and even the private sector can’t compete, let alone the PLA,” Lan said. A private Chinese company might pay its chief executive up to 1 million yuan a year, more than 17 times what the PLA would pay a general.
“The increase is absolutely necessary,” General Tan Naida, a delegate to the National People’s Congress, said outside the Great Hall of the People, where delegates gathered for the congress. “Our salaries are very low, so low in fact that very few talented young people are willing to join the People’s Liberation Army. It’s almost a crisis with our low salaries.” }
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May not be as sexy but it usually does take more brain power and more money than others to get what you want from them. China is gettting what they want right now without shooting a bullet- they have been growing quietly off our blood and we have stood still like we didn’t notice. China has managed to get their foot in Iran, in Saudi, in India, in Iraq, in Russia, In the Sudan and we have debts up to our eyeballs with them! Their ultimate goal may have always been to reclaim Taiwan-problem is while we have been diddling in Iraq and Afghanistan and freaking out over nutty terrorists, China has beat us not in 2020 but now. Because how would we defend Taiwan? It would take a draft. The common person is so fed up with war that you would have to pull teeth to get them to take on military duty.
And this {Chinese products climb up the value chain much more rapidly than most expected, etc. }
Why should that surprise anyone? Everything we buy they pratically make. We sold our souls to the devil…or shall I say our government sold our souls and we are just now waking up to that fact. They spy on our government computers for goodness sakes. These are communists…they only want what they want and they have played the game very well. Now how do we stop them is the question.
March 6, 2007 at 3:40 am
http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2007/edition_02-11-2007/Dictators
Look China is right above our friends the Saudis! Yep, I see a peaceful rise for this brutal dictator.
http://www.hrichina.org/public/index
http://hrichina.org/public/contents/press?revision%5fid=32332&item%5fid=32330
Of course China will have a very difficult time maintaining this so-called “peaceful rise” to power when it is killing, beating and censoring its’ people and has so many environmental and water problems…that is where I think we went wrong in involving ourselves so deeply in these horrible dictatorships. We are helping them make money while oppressing their people.
March 6, 2007 at 3:54 am
Xueleifun,
I agree that China’s investment in education is a good sign. And we agree that 2008 is an important election for the United States.
But GDP is by no means the most important measure of global power, let alone economic strength. China’s GDP per capita still has a very far way to go. And for all the hysteria in the MSM, I don’t feel that China is banging on the door of the US, today or in 2020. 2040? Who knows — that’s a long time from now.
March 6, 2007 at 4:14 am
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/06/wchina06.xm
March 6, 2007 at 4:38 am
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2007/03/06/2003351149
Defense ministry warns on China’s arms budget
OUTNUMBERED: Taiwan’s ground forces, estimated at 130,000, are dwarfed by China’s 1.3 million, 400,000 of whom are based in regions close to the nation
AGENCIES, TAIPEI
Tuesday, Mar 06, 2007, Page 2
Advertising The Ministry of National Defense said yesterday that China’s accelerating military spending posed a threat to regional peace and tilted the military balance across the Taiwan Strait in favor of China.
March 6, 2007 at 10:01 am
I’m more than a little concerned China Confidential has failed to note exactly how China’s military budget is actually being spent.
While it is true that China is buying missile to fire at Taiwan, the actual trend in China’s military development is to do two things
1) Upgrading or discarding outdated equipment that is, to be frank, junk when compared to the equipment being fielded by first world nations like America and Japan (China isn’t so much expanding its military, as it is actually building one that is fit for purpose).
2) Digging in. Much of China’s military spending is going on things like radar systems and interception capabilities to protect its industrial and population centers from a conventional military strike by a tactically and technologically superior enemy (Japan/Washington), the rest is going on CandC etc to allow China to better coordinate a defense of the Mainland and to survive a conventional/nuclear first strike.
China has no carriers, has only a token program to obtain them, and is investing in very few of the things that it would need to project its force s overseas. China Confidential seems to either be unaware of this, or unwilling to say it. Both of which I think are a bit alarming.
China is no threat to Japan and Korea, is only a threat to Taiwan if Taiwan is silly enough to actually declare independence (it’s all about face, Beijing doesn’t care that Taiwan is independent, just so long as it doesn’t say that it is in public), and would need a lot of help from Captain Kirk and his phasers in order to even come close to being a military threat to the US.
March 6, 2007 at 10:05 am
“Taiwan’s ground forces, estimated at 130,000, are dwarfed by China’s 1.3 million, 400,000 of whom are based in regions close to the nation”
China doesn’t have enough ships or planes to transport 400,000 men to Taiwan. It also doesn’t have enough ships and planes to defend them on the trip there.
Also, many of those 1.3 million men are untrained farmers sons doing national service or who joined up for the money. It would take maybe 4 or 5 of them to come close to a single trained Ranger or Marine.
March 6, 2007 at 1:54 pm
ACB,
I tend to agree with you that most of China’s increased military spending will buy relatively mundane things — pay and benefits for troops. replacing old equipment, etc. Aside from the nuclear submarine story that I linked to a few days back, I haven’t heard of any big-ticket items in the budget.
That’s exactly the point that Cheney and Rumsfeld make: the world doesn’t actually know how China is spending the money. I think the point has some validity. But I also think that the “transparency” argument is used to justify China-baiting and runs the risk of creating an enemy where there need not be one.
March 6, 2007 at 2:56 pm
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21338731-2703,00.html
Taiwan tests missile as tension with China flares
SIMMERING tensions between China and Taiwan have boiled over, with Beijing criticising Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian for demanding independence and Taipei test-firing a cruise missile capable of hitting Shanghai
ACB,
Yes, but neither does Iran but we are all up in arms about them…yet my bet is we are heading down a very rough road as people “become alarmed” such as Cheney who wants to know why the fast build up and what they have.
March 6, 2007 at 3:00 pm
The Nuclear Threat From China
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/02/AR2007030201402.html
March 8, 2007 at 4:34 am
[...] and defense side of the US-China relationship remains much rockier, and this weekend’s announcement of a major increase in China’s military spending did not help. VP Dick Cheney ultimately owns [...]