At the double

ON THE first day of the annual session of the National People’s Congress last week, China announced a defence budget for 2014 of $132 billion, a generous increase of 12.2% on the year before. That was the official figure, though the real one may be 40% higher still. It set off a flurry of alarm among neighbouring countries. They see the relentless growth in China’s military spending—double-digit increases almost every year for the past two decades, and now the biggest in three years—as going hand-in-hand with a determination to settle sovereignty disputes in its “near seas”, that is, the Yellow, East China and South China Seas, on China’s own terms.

China’s growing military capability inevitably causes concern. As it happened, only a day earlier the Pentagon had published a Quadrennial Defence Review that reflected the probability of flat or declining American defence spending over the next five years. China’s military budget is only about a third the size of America’s but, if present trends continue, the gap will quickly narrow. Certainly Japan, Vietnam and South Korea are raising their military expenditure in response to the Chinese military build-up, but China will still vastly outspend the combined efforts of all its maritime neighbours. Tensions are high with Japan over the Senkaku Islands (Japan controls the islands but China claims them, calling them the Diaoyu). In light of China’s unilateral declaration in November of an “air defence identification zone” in the East China Sea, and bouts of provocative behaviour in maritime disputes with the Philippines and Vietnam, concerns are growing that China is eager to flex its new military muscle.