HONG KONG—The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy of China has claimed that including expenditure on armed police, Chinese military expenditure reached U.S. $40.9 billion, marking the second highest national military expenditure in the world.
The Information Center said the Chinese State Council Information Office planned to release a China National Defense White Paper which will reveal a lot of important information.
The Information Center pointed out that expenditure on Chinese armed police was 85 billion Yuan (about US$ 10 billion) against an expected budget for this year of 100 billion Yuan. This year, the regular army and armed police expenditure reached 383.8 billion Yuan (about $ 49.2 billion). This exceeds the military expenditures of Britain, France, Russia and Japan and ranked as the second highest in the world.
Even though China has not included armed police in its official military expenditure, taking into account China’s economic growth rate, and appreciation of RMB (Chinese currency), China will still be the second in the world in military spending in 2008.
Should China’s military spending continue to grow, the world should be more concerned.
China is planning to release a national defense policy white paper, which is the second white paper since the CCP’s new Army Committee was appointed in September 2004. The first White paper was published in December 2004, when the current Chinese leader, Hu Jiantao, had been in the role of Chairman of the Military Committee for less than three months. The content was put together by former CCP chairman Jiang Zemin’s old gang.
The Information Center said that this year’s white paper was completed by the new Central Military Commission. There is a new description in the section on the exploration of nuclear weapons, weapon technology, arms transport, and other important aspects. Some important military data will also be revealed.
