“Watch how China defends itself” – Excerpts
While going through my long (and over-due) “to-do” list, I came across a series of articles which I had kep for a later date…They are on various t opics but all worth a read, in my opinion…Here is the first one:
“Watch how China defends itself” by the respected analyst C Raja Mohan which was published in The Indian Express last March (Mar 13, ’06). Excerpts below:
�”For a country that shares nearly 3,600 km long border with China, there is hardly any policy interest in India on the trend lines of Beijing�s military expenditure. Last week when China announced a 14.7 per cent hike in its annual defence budget, all it got was a big yawn in New Delhi. Just a week before that India had announced a rise of about 8.9 per cent in its own defence spending.
Despite the much talked about expansion in Chinese spending on rural development � �rebuilding the socialist country side� is the new slogan in Beijing � the nearly decade long two-digit growth rate in Chinese defence spending continues.
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There was a time � from the early 1960s to the early 1990s � when the Indian defence establishment and strategic community would keep a hawk eye on the patterns of Chinese defence spending. With the improvement in Sino-Indian relations over the last decade and a declining sense of a security threat, there is little serious attention in New Delhi to Beijing�s defence policies.
While few in India today, and rightly so, are obsessed with a potential military threat from China, Delhi would be unwise to ignore the new directions in Chinese military spending, especially in relation to its modernisation of armed forces which holds many lessons for India.
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Officially the Chinese figure for defence spending this year is $35 billion. But given the very different way China calculates its defence expenditure � Beijing does not use the standard templates of prevalent accounting systems in the world � there is a big discrepancy between Chinese figures and external assessments.
Last year, for example, the official Chinese figure for defence spending was $29.9 billion. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute put it $35.4; the US think-tank Rand Corporation calculated it to be $42-51 billion…Rand also estimates that Chinese military spending doubled between 1997 and 2003, almost catching up with the UK and Japan, which spend the most after the US on defence.
…For India it is more important to know how China spends its defence bucks rather than the mere size of the budget. China�s expenditure on equipment and acquisition appears far higher and more sustained than India�s.
…Even more important for India is the strong commitment of the PRC to a fundamental transformation of its military. China is slowly reducing the size of its armed forces, while making it more equipment oriented. Mobility, better fire power, and ability to operate at longer distances have increasingly become the focus of Chinese military spending.
…In India, there�s hardly any discussion on military reform. If the Defence Ministry has given it any thought, it is a big secret. In any case no one is asking any questions on India�s military modernisation in Parliament, which gets excited only about presumed scandals on defence purchases. You can bet there would be no more than 20 MPs in Lok Sabha when the defence budget is passed this year. ”
Truly shocking state of affairs…Is anybody listening?
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“ATITHI DEVO BHAVA”
Excerpts from an article by Harsh V Pant, dt 30th June:
…Last year, there was a lot of hoopla surrounding the fact that China had announced a mere 7.5 per cent jump in its defence budget. It was the first time since the 1980s that China’s defence spending had increased by a single-digit percentage figure. But this year, we are back to the norm of a double-digit increase.
…What has been causing concern in Asia and beyond is the seeming opacity of China’s military set-up, with an emerging consensus that Beijing’s real military spending is at least double the announced figure. The official figures announced by the Chinese government do not include the cost of new weapon purchases, research or other big-ticket items for China’s highly secretive military. As a result, the real figures are much higher than the revealed amount. And in the past year, the Chinese military has surprised even the US with the speed of its weapons development.
But India’s own defence modernization programme is faltering. This year, the Indian government has allocated only 1.8 per cent of its gross domestic product to defence, although, ostensibly, military expenditure has gone up by 11.58 per cent. This is only the second time in over three decades that the defence to GDP ratio has fallen below 2 per cent of the GDP.
…Over the last two decades, the military expenditure of India has been around 2.75 per cent.
…The armed forces, for long, have been asking for an allocation of 3 per cent of the nation’s GDP to defence. This has received broad political support in recent years. The Indian prime minister has been explicit about this, suggesting that “if our economy grows at about 8 per cent per annum, it will not be difficult for [the Indian government] to allocate about 3 per cent of GDP for national defenceâ€.
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But greater defence expenditure alone will not solve the problems plaguing Indian defence policy.
…The defence acquisition process remains mired in corruption and bureaucratic hassles.
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The Indian government is yet to demonstrate the political will to tackle the defence policy paralysis, which seems to be rendering all the claims of India’s rise as a military power increasingly hollow. The capability differential between China and India is rising at an alarming rate.
Militarily, China far ahead than India: PM http://bit.ly/mxX4ZM How many remembr tht the 2G scandal is bigger than India’s defence budget?