CHINA NEWS - China says it will beef up military expenditure in 2011, sending ripples in the region for its exponential growth of military strength. It is reported that Beijing will increase its defense budget this year by 12.7% to 601.1bn yuan ($91.5bn; £56.2bn) up from 532.1bn yuan last year. However, analysts speculate that the actual budget is much higher than the government report.
In the recent years China has grown as one of the largest economic nations, and also huge impetus has been given to build a strong military presence. The defense budget was increased by 7.5% in 2010, doubled from previous years.
Chinese parliamentary spokesman Li Zhaoxing justified the raise and said it wouldn't send any threat to neighbors. He further said that China had a lower defense budget by world standards and always paid attention to restrain to put money on defense.
The government has assuaged that the military modernization is completely peaceful and pose no threat to countries. However, the latest hike in budget in People’s Liberation Army is likely to create ripples in the world.
China is preparing to build stealth fighters and modern missile systems, and also ready to launch its first aircraft carrier.
Japan is apprehensive about China’s defense aggression and said the Beijing is becoming more assertive to develop modern defense equipment.
It is noted that the relations between two neighbors have become sour over disputed islands in the East China Sea, which is the possibly a large reservoir of oil and gas.
On Thursday, Japan accused China for intruding military aircraft flew close to the disputed chain. Yukio Edano, Japan's chief cabinet secretary said that China defense modernization was a matter of concern and lacked transparency.
China has also laid claim to vast areas of water in the South China Sea, creating antagonism from many South East Asia nations.
No comments:
Post a Comment
User comments posted on Asia Pacific News website are the sole views and opinions of the comment writer and are not representative of any of our staff, writer, agency, reporter or citizen journalist. We accept no liability and will not be held accountable for user comments.
We reserve the right to edit, to remove or to censor any comments.
Webmasters seeking for backlinks may contribute a guest post with two outbound links (Home page and internal page) and submit it in the below comment box, which will be shifted to blog post under suitable category by moderator.