BEIJING - China announced yesterday that it will again sharply increase its military spending this year, budgeting a 17.6 percent rise that is roughly equal to last year's increase.
Disclosure of plans for a $59 billion outlay in 2008 followed a US report Monday that raised questions about China's rapidly increasing military budget, and less than three weeks before a presidential election in Taiwan, the island over which China claims sovereignty but which is self-governed.
A Chinese spokesman said the country's decadelong military buildup does "not pose a threat to any country," but he warned that relations with Taiwan are in a crucial stage and the island would "surely pay a dear price" if it were to take steps that China viewed as a declaration of independence.
A $59 billion budget is still a fraction of what the United States spends each year on its armed forces. President Bush requested $515 billion last month to fund the Pentagon, an amount that does not include spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The United States has pressed China to be more open about its intentions as the pace and scope of its military capabilities increase. At a Monday briefing at the Pentagon, David Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, reiterated the US view.
"China's military buildup has been characterized by the opacity," Sedney told reporters, and "by the inability of people in the region and around the world to really know what ties together the capabilities that China's acquiring with the intentions it has."
The Pentagon report said China's near-term focus remains on preparing for potential problems in the Taiwan Strait. But China's nuclear force modernization, its growing arsenal of advanced missiles, and its forays into space and cyberspace technologies are changing military balances in Asia and beyond, the report concluded.
Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told a news conference in Beijing that the United States was stuck in a "Cold War mentality."
He asserted that the annual Pentagon report on China's military power, mandated by Congress since 1999, "is a serious distortion of facts and attempts to interfere in China's internal affairs."
