China increases military spending by 18%

China's military budget will increase by 17.8% in 2007, the spokesman for the National People's Congress has said.

Jiang Enzhu said that military spending next year would amount to 350.92bn yuan, an increase of 52.99bn yuan.

The rise was announced the day before Chinese lawmakers were due start their annual parliamentary session.

Mr Jiang said the money would be used to increase wages for military personnel and to upgrade weapons, but gave no further details.

China says its military budget rose by 14.7% last year to $36.6bn

Catching up fast it seems

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[edit on 4-3-2007 by UK Wizard]

For almost 15 years the Chinese military budget was in decline simply because economic development had taken over as the highest priority and thus the budget did not increase with inflation. This is pretty much a adjustment to give soldiers proper pay checks.

The average officer was earning $2,000 a month a few years ago and recent budget increases increased that to $3,000