By Franz-Stefan Gady
Money will be spent on the informatization of the PLA.
The People’s Republic of China will increase its defense budget by 886.9 billion yuan ($141.45 billion), according to Reuters. This confirms speculations that the spending increase will outpace China’s sluggish GDP-growth of around seven percent projected for 2015.
As an expert on China’s military notes, “The defense budget is basically no longer tied to economic performance. There is a political decision made across the board in China that defense spending is sacrosanct, untouchable.”
China’s defense budget rose by 12.2 percent last year to about $132 billion, second only to the Pentagon’s war chest, which still boasts the world’s largest military budget at around $534 billion in baseline funding. However, as I pointed out yesterday, the Chinese defense budget does not take into account various expenditures such as weapons imports, research and development, and money spent on the PLA’s strategic forces. Real military expenditures may be as much as 40 – 55 percent higher.
What are the funding priorities of the Chinese military in 2015?
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