China military budget threat to region: Taiwan

Taipei, Mar 5: Taiwan's defence ministry said today China's accelerating military spending posed a threat to regional peace and tilted the military balance in favour of Taipei's old rival across the Taiwan Strait.

China, which views Taiwan as part of its territory, announced a nearly 18 percent jump in its defence budget for 2007 to help modernise its military, in part so as to ensure it would be able to re-take the island if it ever declared independence.

''This has become the most powerful policy tool by which China pursues regional power, not only upsetting the military balance across the Taiwan Strait, but also increasing the potential for a disruption to peace and stability in Asia,'' Rear Admiral Wu Chi-fang, the ministry spokesman, said in a written statement.

It was announced yesterday that the planned budget for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) this year was 351 billion yuan, or about 45 billion dollars. That marks an increase of 53 billion yuan on 2006, representing the fastest growth in a decade.

Taiwan's military budget has been declining in real terms as a proportion of GDP and overall government spending in recent years and by comparison was only 7.6 billion dollars in 2006.

Legislative deadlock has prevented the government from securing supplementary funds to buy new, cutting-edge weapons the military wants to counter the threat from China, which has almost 1,000 missiles aimed at the island.

''The increasing budgets over the years is reflected in the fast pace of its military modernisation, especially in the upgrading of the combat capabilities of its naval and air forces as well as its Second Artillery Battalion,'' Wu said.

The Second Artillery Battalion wields China's nuclear missiles.

Taiwan and China have lived in armed confrontation since 1949 when the former Chinese Nationalist government lost a civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists and fled to the island.

Taiwan's ground forces, numbering an estimated 130,000, are dwarfed by China's 1.3 million, 400,000 of whom are based in regions adjacent to the island, according to the Pentagon report.

Reuters