Xi Jinping’s China pumps $225bn into military for global role

The Chinese government has announced an 8.1 per cent boost in defence spending — to $225 billion.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, right, with President Xi Jinping during the opening session of the annual National People's Congress in Beijing. Picture: AP

The Chinese government has announced an 8.1 per cent boost in defence spending — to $225 billion — as it promotes the People’s Liberation Army’s ambitious new global role.

Beijing will splurge 1.11 trillion yuan ($225bn) on its military, ­according to a budget report presented yesterday to the opening session of the annual National People’s Congress.

“We will stick to the Chinese path in strengthening our armed forces, advance all aspects of military training and war preparedness, and firmly and resolvedly safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests,” Premier Li Keqiang said in his three-hour state-of-the-­nation address in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

Mr Li said the armed forces were “full of new drive, have taken solid strides towards building themselves into a powerful military with Chinese characteristics”.

The PLA is controlled by the Communist Party of China, rather than the state, although the government funds it.

“Faced with profound changes in the national security environment”, the unity between party, military and government must remain “strong as stone”, Mr Li said.

The defence boost is above the 7 per cent increase last year and the 7.6 per cent rise in 2016, but still below the double-digit surge the previous decade, which pushed China’s defence budget to the world’s second highest after the US.

The new budget is still only 24 per cent of US defence spending.

 

Australia’s defence budget is increasing about 6 per cent this financial year, to about $35bn.

China’s military has never been busier, at home and abroad, as it rapidly modernises to meet President Xi Jinping’s “China dream”.

Mr Li said the PLA had already “basically completed” Mr Xi’s target of reducing its numbers — mainly of infantry — by 300,000 to 2 million as it restructures its command system and refocuses spending on modern hardware.

The budget papers yesterday revealed the government spent almost $10bn last year to decommission soldiers, smoothing what can be a risky process.

Many foreign analysts believe China’s military spending is much higher than the official budget figures, because of projects whose costs are acquitted “off book”.

At the party’s national congress in October, Mr Xi proclaimed the PLA would become “world class” by mid-century.

International concern about China’s rise was illustrated yesterday by the arrival at Vietnam’s port of Da Nang of the US aircraft carrier the Carl Vinson, with the ship’s 5500 personnel coming onshore to underline the warming relationship between the former enemies.

It was the first substantial landing of American military in Vietnam since the US withdrawal in 1975.

 

Vietnam and the US share a concern about China’s construction of military bases on man-made islands in the South China Sea, part of which Vietnam also claims.

In the past year the Chinese military has confronted Indian troops over disputed border land in the Himalayas, and Japan over islands under Japanese management but which China claims in the East China Sea.

The PLA is also increasingly active around the world.

It has participated in 24 UN peacekeeping missions, involving 31,000 military personnel, 13 of whom have died on duty.

In the past decade the navy has dispatched 26 escort task force groups, including more than 70 ships, for escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia.

The PLA has built its first overseas military base at Djibouti, Somalia.

Last year China sent three warships led by guided missile destroyer Hefei, one of its navy’s most advanced vessels, to participate in a joint exercise in the Baltic Sea with a Russian fleet — China’s first such engagement in European inland waters.