By Shannon Tiezzi
Recently released defense budgets by China and the U.S. reveal different approaches but similar goals in Asia.
Beijing released its defense budget for 2014 today, as a draft budget was submitted to the National People’s Congress for review. Xinhua reported that the new budget called for a 12.2 percent increase, raising defense spending to 808.2 billion yuan ($132 billion). Outside of China, analysts and reporters viewed this increase with suspicion. “China’s Xi ramps up military spending in face of worried region,” a Reuters headline read. The article cited unease within Japan and Taiwan over a lack of transparency on how the money will be used.
Meanwhile, at the end of the February the Pentagon released its spending proposal, which called for cut-backs that would reduce the Army to between 440,000 and 450,000 troops (down from a peak of 570,000 in the post-9/11 period). News outlets across the country screamed variations of the New York Times’ headline: “Pentagon Plans to Shrink Army to Pre-World War II Level.”
The official Pentagon budget, released yesterday, called for $496 billion in spending, keeping the budget effectively static. Over the course of the five-year budget plan, however, the Pentagon actually seeks $115 billion more than was allocated for it by the 2011 Budget Control Act. The fiscal year 2015 budget in particular “seeks to repair the damage caused by the deep spending cuts imposed by sequestration,” according to an article on the Defense Department’s website.
Read the full story at The Diplomat