While the United States has announced this year that it is requesting from Congressional appropriators the largest Defense budget in history and Defense officials are publicly claiming that (despite the forecast of a looming budget crisis), China announced today its lowest percentage increase over prior year defense spending since 1989. A released budget report indicated that the Chinese government has appropriated $77.9B for the military this year, which represented an increase of about $5.4B (7.5%) over last year. The irony here is palpable: in a year where Department of Defense officials seem to be taking pains to assure Congress that the rising tide of defense spending will not stop in the near future, the primary international threat used to justify such spending has indicated a slowdown of its own.
The Congressional Defense committees will take up the $708.2B FY 2011 DOD budget proposal later this summer.
To read more, please go to the New York Times.
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