Aidana Sapuan
On March 5, 2017 China’s Ministry of Finance made a surprising report, announcing that this year’s military spending increase will be only about 7% (compared to 7.6% in 2016), the slowest pace since 20101. Being the second largest army in the world after the US and given potential disputes with the US over the South China Sea and Taiwan, this announcement might convey an important message to its territorial neighbors as well as to its biggest military rival – the US under Trump’s administration. Nevertheless, China’s more assertive foreign policy and its involvement in arms race with the US attribute a great controversy to this year’s military cutback.
The announcement is even more unaccustomed to Chinese presidential governmental reports, since for the first time in decades the exact figure for total military budget of 2017 was not revealed. This has raised concerns in the international community about the absence of transparency in China’s decision-making apparatus. But more importantly, the decrease in the growth rate of military spending can potentially degrade internal civil-military relations of a country. Under the initiative of President Xi Jinping, about 300.000 troops are going to be cut by the end of 2017, which has spoiled in February’s 2-days demonstration by the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) veterans demanding retirement benefits for demobilized personnel.
In the light of continuing tensions with the US, internal difficulties in managing the military and the ongoing military reformation, reporting on decrease in the growth rate of military spending raises a logical question: “Does China really intend to slowdown its military growth?” There are at least two reasons to think that “no” is the more appropriate answer for this question.
Firstly, Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated a large inconsistency between estimates from China’s official reports on military budget and the outside estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Comparatively, though China officially reported to spend $144.2 billion in 2015, the outside estimate equaled $214.5 billion. China’s lack of transparency and weak commitment before the international community to provide detailed reports is one of the explanations to this discrepancy. Moreover, there are other sources financing different items of China’s military on a regular basis, as said by Collin Koh Swee Lean, an associate research fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore: “One shouldn’t really trust those figures, because Beijing could have hidden budget overlays for such opaque activities as military R&D, or other expenses beyond what it wants the public and the international community to know about.” Indeed, there are other sources of income that come from PLA commercial enterprises, militia off-budget income, etc which is mainly spent on procurement of military equipment from Russia.
Second reason is grounded on Xi Jinping’s latest initiative to head a new central commission for integrated military and civilian development. In the context of the latest budgetary changes, the role of this commission might be to mobilize civilian resources to flow into the military sphere. As such, companies in China are required to make budget contributions into ‘civil-military integration’ schemes to finance infrastructure, R&D, PLA capabilities under legal off-military budget framework.
China’s cutback in the growth of military spending provides a good contextual framework for analyzing the importance of establishing consistent and consequential method for budget allocation of the military sphere. Absence of transparency of budget allocation schemes, opacity in splitting the budget across different military items and other issues are the reflection of the main problem faced by consolidating democracies as posed by Geralde (in Bruneau and Tollefson, 2008). Indeed, China’s cutback of military spending in absolute terms does not reflect real changes in how and where the money is spent. Whether it is caused by the inability of civilian government to control military budget decision-making process, by the closed process of budget formulation or by China’s attempt to convey a wrong message to the international community is still under a big question. Nevertheless, even a slight deviation of budget decision from what the real state of civil-military affairs needs might spoil serious problems for China in terms of relations between the military and the civilians.
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Reference list:
Bruneau, Thomas C., and Scott D. Tollefson. 2008. Who Guards the Guardians and How: Democratic Civil-Military Relations. University of Texas Press
Web sources:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39165080
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/china-2017-military-budget-rise-slows-170304072324642.html
http://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-defence-idUSKBN15706
On March 5, 2017 China’s Ministry of Finance made a surprising report, announcing that this year’s military spending increase will be only about 7% (compared to 7.6% in 2016), the slowest pace since 20101. Being the second largest army in the world after the US and given potential disputes with the US over the South China Sea and Taiwan, this announcement might convey an important message to its territorial neighbors as well as to its biggest military rival – the US under Trump’s administration. Nevertheless, China’s more assertive foreign policy and its involvement in arms race with the US attribute a great controversy to this year’s military cutback.
The announcement is even more unaccustomed to Chinese presidential governmental reports, since for the first time in decades the exact figure for total military budget of 2017 was not revealed. This has raised concerns in the international community about the absence of transparency in China’s decision-making apparatus. But more importantly, the decrease in the growth rate of military spending can potentially degrade internal civil-military relations of a country. Under the initiative of President Xi Jinping, about 300.000 troops are going to be cut by the end of 2017, which has spoiled in February’s 2-days demonstration by the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) veterans demanding retirement benefits for demobilized personnel.
In the light of continuing tensions with the US, internal difficulties in managing the military and the ongoing military reformation, reporting on decrease in the growth rate of military spending raises a logical question: “Does China really intend to slowdown its military growth?” There are at least two reasons to think that “no” is the more appropriate answer for this question.
Firstly, Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated a large inconsistency between estimates from China’s official reports on military budget and the outside estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Comparatively, though China officially reported to spend $144.2 billion in 2015, the outside estimate equaled $214.5 billion. China’s lack of transparency and weak commitment before the international community to provide detailed reports is one of the explanations to this discrepancy. Moreover, there are other sources financing different items of China’s military on a regular basis, as said by Collin Koh Swee Lean, an associate research fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore: “One shouldn’t really trust those figures, because Beijing could have hidden budget overlays for such opaque activities as military R&D, or other expenses beyond what it wants the public and the international community to know about.” Indeed, there are other sources of income that come from PLA commercial enterprises, militia off-budget income, etc which is mainly spent on procurement of military equipment from Russia.
Second reason is grounded on Xi Jinping’s latest initiative to head a new central commission for integrated military and civilian development. In the context of the latest budgetary changes, the role of this commission might be to mobilize civilian resources to flow into the military sphere. As such, companies in China are required to make budget contributions into ‘civil-military integration’ schemes to finance infrastructure, R&D, PLA capabilities under legal off-military budget framework.
China’s cutback in the growth of military spending provides a good contextual framework for analyzing the importance of establishing consistent and consequential method for budget allocation of the military sphere. Absence of transparency of budget allocation schemes, opacity in splitting the budget across different military items and other issues are the reflection of the main problem faced by consolidating democracies as posed by Geralde (in Bruneau and Tollefson, 2008). Indeed, China’s cutback of military spending in absolute terms does not reflect real changes in how and where the money is spent. Whether it is caused by the inability of civilian government to control military budget decision-making process, by the closed process of budget formulation or by China’s attempt to convey a wrong message to the international community is still under a big question. Nevertheless, even a slight deviation of budget decision from what the real state of civil-military affairs needs might spoil serious problems for China in terms of relations between the military and the civilians.
_________________
Reference list:
Bruneau, Thomas C., and Scott D. Tollefson. 2008. Who Guards the Guardians and How: Democratic Civil-Military Relations. University of Texas Press
Web sources:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39165080
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/china-2017-military-budget-rise-slows-170304072324642.html
http://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-defence-idUSKBN15706
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