China defense budget up 7.5 percent

BEIJING, March 4 (UPI) -- China's military spending in 2010 will be up 7.5 percent from last year, the first such drop from the double-digit growth in years, an official said Thursday.

Li Zhaoxing, spokesman for the annual session of the National People's Congress, told reporters this year's defense spending of about $78 billion would account for 6.4 percent of China's total fiscal expenditure, unchanged from last year, Xinhua reported. The final figures, however, will be decided only after the budget is approved by the NPC at its annual session opening Friday.

China's military spending, a major source of concern to the West, has been growing at more than 10 percent annually for the past two decades.

It was not clear why the growth was brought down to single digits this year.

Earlier, People's Liberation Army Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan said the past double-digit growth was designed mainly to address inadequacies of China's defense development.

"This year's 7.5 percent increase signaled that China's defense development has entered a more mature, healthy and stable stage," Luo said but gave no explanation.

Li told reporters this year's increase in military spending will go mainly to support military reforms, improve its capability to deal with varied threats and complete diversified tasks and raise the living standards of servicemen. He gave no details about the threats facing the country.

He said China's defense budget is comparatively low considering its large population, population and territory. He said the defense spending has accounted for about 1.4 percent of China's GDP, compared to 4 percent in the United States, and more than 2 percent in the United Kingdom, France and Russia.