Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=03/14/01

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

NUMBER=5-49141

TITLE=CHINA / MILITARY SPENDING

BYLINE=JIM RANDLE

DATELINE=BEIJING

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: China's President Jiang Zemin is urging his armed forces to speed up modernization of their weapons and tactics. Mr. Jiang is backing his instructions with the largest increase in Beijing's official military budget in years. V-O-A's Jim Randle reports.

TEXT: In a speech to members of the National People's Congress, Mr. Jiang said it is urgent for the People's Liberation Army to be able to fight and win on tomorrow's high tech battlefields.

/// SFX: CHINESE T-V NEWS--ESTABLISH & FADE UNDER ///

Television news accounts quote Mr. Jiang saying China's military will improve through "progress in science and technology."

Earlier, China's Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng told legislators the growing shift to high-tech weapons, and a pay raise for China's two-and-one-half-million troops, will force Beijing to boost spending 17-point-seven percent this year.

That brings the total official military budget about 17-billion dollars. By comparison, the U-S military spends more than 300-billion dollars. The official budget in neighboring Japan also is far larger than Beijing's spending.

But most foreign analysts, including Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, say the official figures reveal only a fraction of China's actual military spending.

/// O'HANLON ACT ///

One has to adjust these numbers upward by a factor of two or three.

/// END ACT ///

Mr. O'Hanlon says the official budget leaves out the cost of weapons bought from foreign sources, some research and development, and many other items generally included in most nations' military spending figures.

Author and professor Dennis Hickey, who studies Asian military forces at South West Missouri State University, says China's military spending has been growing for years, reflecting a slow shift from a four-million-member, poorly equipped army of conscripts toward a smaller, more modern, more mobile and more professional force.

/// DENNIS HICKEY ///

This isn't something that just happened this year. They have had double-digit increases ever since the early 1990's.

/// END ACT ///

Analysts say China began its modernization after watching expensive, U-S - built precision weapons devastate Soviet-style military hardware in the Gulf War and the conflict over Kosovo. Most of China's weapons and tactics were based on those same discredited models.

Air-defense expert Andrew Brooks, of London's International Institute of Strategic Studies, says China is just one of many nations rushing to buy or build modern weapons.

/// BROOKS ACT ///

Just as everybody else is in the process of modernizing their forces - Americans, Brits, Russians - everybody is getting away from the old Cold War mentality, toward precision, professionalism, high tech. And the Chinese are doing that.

/// END ACT ///

The British analyst says the result is a budding arms race in Asia, with military build-ups by various nations frightening neighboring countries into boosting their spending on arms. (Signed)

NEB/HK/JR/WTW