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Rift over arms sales to China
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| 09 March 05 |
China's defence budget has enjoyed double-digit annual growth for the last 15 years. The official 2004 budget was 211.7 billion yuan (US$27 billion), seven times higher than the figure two decades ago.
Nor is the official budget a guidance to real expenditure, since major items are either hidden in other ministries' budgets: this applies in particular to the space and nuclear programmes, as well as overall military research. The budget also does not include revenues from overseas sales of Chinese weapons, or the substantial other business activities of the People's Liberation Army.
Western intelligence estimates suggest that China's true military effort is approximately US$78 billion a year. The latest announcement of yet another increase was timed to coincide with the debate about China's total state budget, now before the country's annual parliamentary session. But it is guaranteed to heighten a simmering dispute between the Europeans and the US over the sales of weapons to the Beijing government. Here are the details of the heated disputes going on across the Atlantic.
In the wake of the bloody repression of the Tiananmen Square riots in 1989, most Western and a few Asian governments imposed an embargo on the sale of military equipment to China. The US, Japan and Australia wish to maintain this embargo; the Europeans, however, are now determined to lift their own ban. Predictably, the US is crying foul, claiming that the European initiative has the potential to upset not only US relations with its closest allies, but the entire military balance in Asia.
To a large extent, the row itself is a monumental irrelevance, as the single biggest arms supplier to China is actually Russia. And even with the sales ban in place, the Europeans are already responsible for 2.8 per cent of China's military purchases, including fairly sophisticated engine technology for fighter aircraft and propulsion engines for the Chinese navy.
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