BEIJING: China is raising its defense spending in 2022 by 7.1 percent to $229 billion, up from a 6.8 percent increase the year before.
Saturday’s announcement marks a continuation of the robust spending that has given China an increasingly powerful military that is challenging the US armed forces’ dominance in the Indo-Pacific region.
China has the world’s second-largest defense budget after the US, allowing it to maintain the largest standing military, with 3 million personnel and an arsenal of advanced weaponry, including two aircraft carriers with more on the way, stealth fighters, an advanced missile force and nuclear-powered submarines.
China has maintained the drive to expand and modernize its armed forces despite high levels of government debt and a slowing economy, partly as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The government says most of the spending increases will go toward improving welfare for troops. Observers say the budget omits much of China’s spending on weaponry, most of which is developed domestically.
The People’s Liberation Army exercises a strong political role as the military branch of the ruling Communist Party, overseen by President and party leader Xi Jinping, who heads the government’s armed forces commissions.
The military is largely designed to maintain its threat to use force to bring self-governing Taiwan under its control, although it has also grown more assertive in the South China Sea, the western Pacific, the Indian Ocean and elsewhere.
In his address to Saturday’s opening session of the ceremonial legislature, the National People’s Congress, Premier Li Keqiang said China would “fully implement Xi Jinping’s thinking on strengthening the armed forces and the military strategy for the new era ... and strengthen party leadership and party building in all aspects of the military.”
Li indicated no change in China’s approach to Taiwan, which it threatens to annex by force if necessary.
China will “advance peaceful growth of relations across the Taiwan Strait and the reunification of China,” Li said. “We firmly oppose any separatist activities seeking Taiwan independence and firmly oppose foreign interference.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked conjecture that China might be more disposed to use force against Taiwan if it sensed a lack of resolution on the part of the US and its allies.
China to raise defense spending by 7.1 percent to $229 billion
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China to raise defense spending by 7.1 percent to $229 billion
- Marks a continuation of the robust spending that has given China an increasingly powerful military
Rubio says technical talks with Denmark, Greenland officials over Arctic security have begun
- US Secretary of State on Wednesday appeared eager to downplay Trump’s rift with Europe over Greenland
WASHINGTON: Technical talks between the US, Denmark and Greenland over hatching an Arctic security deal are now underway, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.
The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland agreed to create a working group aimed at addressing differences with the US during a Washington meeting earlier this month with Vice President JD Vance and Rubio.
The group was created after President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for the US to take over Greenland, a Danish territory, in the name of countering threats from Russia and China — calls that Greenland, Denmark and European allies forcefully rejected.
“It begins today and it will be a regular process,” Rubio said of the working group, as he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We’re going to try to do it in a way that isn’t like a media circus every time these conversations happen, because we think that creates more flexibility on both sides to arrive at a positive outcome.”
The Danish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday’s talks focused on “how we can address US concerns about security in the Arctic while respecting the red lines of the Kingdom.” Red lines refers to the sovereignty of Greenland.
Trump’s renewed threats in recent weeks to annex Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of a NATO ally, has roiled US-European relations.
Trump this month announced he would slap new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries that opposed his takeover calls, only to abruptly drop his threats after a “framework” for a deal over access to the mineral-rich island was reached, with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s help. Few details of the agreement have emerged.
After stiff pushback from European allies to his Greenland rhetoric, Trump also announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that he would take off the table the possibility of using American military force to acquire Greenland.
The president backed off his tariff threats and softened his language after Wall Street suffered its biggest losses in months over concerns that Trump’s Greenland ambitions could spur a trade war and fundamentally rupture NATO, a 32-member transatlantic military alliance that’s been a linchpin of post-World War II security.
Rubio on Wednesday appeared eager to downplay Trump’s rift with Europe over Greenland.
“We’ve got a little bit of work to do, but I think we’re going to wind up in a good place, and I think you’ll hear the same from our colleagues in Europe very shortly,” Rubio said.
Rubio during Wednesday’s hearing also had a pointed exchange with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, about Trump repeatedly referring to Greenland as Iceland while at Davos.
“Yeah, he meant to say Greenland, but I think we’re all familiar with presidents that have verbal stumbles,” Rubio said in responding to Kaine’s questions about Trump’s flub — taking a veiled dig at former President Joe Biden. “We’ve had presidents like that before. Some made a lot more than this one.”
