China Transparent On Its Military Spending: Chinese Media

China has claimed that its growing military spending is way less than that of US, UK and Japan in terms of per capita expenditure.

Refuting the annual military balance report by UK based International Institute For Strategic studies that accused Beijing of lack of transparency in its military spending, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, Hua Chunying said. They should instead view country’s development in an objective, just and rational way.

"China's annual defense budget is incorporated into the annual financial budget draft of the central government, and then submitted to the National People's Congress for approval," she said.

The whole process is open and transparent, and so are the total amount of the defense spending, its composition and other information, she added.

 “China’s military expenditure in 2014 accounted for less than 1.5 percent of GDP, which is not only well below major countries in the world, but also less than the world average of 2.6 percent,” she said.

“Our per capita military spending is even less, only one twenty-second that of the US, one-ninth of Britain and one-fifth of Japan,” she said.

Chinese government released its official defense spending at 808.23 billion yuan ($131.57 billion), an increase from the previous year of 12.2% in 2014.

However unofficial estimates place the total amount of military spending for China higher than the Chinese government figures. SIPRI, RAND, the CIA and the DIA estimated the budget to be between US$30–65 billion for 2013.

In terms of purchasing power parity, or the relative purchasing strength of the expenditure, the SIPRI estimate was as high as US$140 billion. The Chinese government's published budget at that time was less than US$25 billion.