Beijing, March 05: China announced its smallest defence budget increase in years amid national belt-tightening, and vowed that its rapid military modernization posed no threat to other countries.
The proposed military budget for 2010 is 532.1 billion yuan ($77.9 billion), up 7.5% from actual defence spending in 2009, a government spokesman said.
The figure breaks a string of double-digit increases going back many years that has caused worry among China’s neighbours and the US over the objectives of an effort to rapidly modernise its once-backward armed forces.
“China is committed to peace,” Li Zhaoxing, spokesman for the National People’s Congress (NPC), said in unveiling a figure he called “reasonable”.
“The sole purpose of China’s military strength is to protect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he told a news conference.
Li said the figure was in a budget submitted to the NPC, China’s rubber-stamp parliament, which opens its annual session on Friday and typically approves such items by overwhelming margins. Li, a former foreign minister, said the bulk of the spending increase would go towards improving conditions for China’s 2.3 million service personnel and for the “revolution” in China’s military, a phrase referring to modernization.
He however stressed the figure amounted to only about 1.4% of China’s gross domestic product, compared to what he said was 4% for the US.
-Agencies