2005年NPR美国国家公共电台三月-China to Substantially Boost Its Military

China has announced it will substantially increase its military budget this year, another in a series of annual increases that will boost China's defense 1 spending to nearly thirty billion dollars. Today's announcement comes on the eve of that country's National People's Congress, a yearly gathering 2 that functions as a kind of parliament. NPR's Rob Gifford is in Beijing.

"And Rob, what is the reason for this increase in military spending?"

"Well, as you say, this has been going on every year for the last decade or so and it's all part of the transformation 3 of the Chinese Military, Eh the Chinese military used to rely more on the fact that it had more people than anyone else, more soldiers,and now it's trying to transform itself into a 21st century Army, Navy and Airforce. They want to go high-tech 4 and of course that costs money. So looking at the EU arms embargo 5 which may be about to be lifted, looking at Russia, looking elsewhere, they want to purchase more weaponry and really upgrade their systems and the other part of it is that they're trying to lay off people, that's, er, hundreds of thousands of military personnel are going to be laid off over the next few years. And this is the side of it they will try to emphasize it at the news conference today. The softer side of it -- they need to pay those people pensions as those military personnel go into retirement 6."

"Looking to the People's Congress that is going to be convened 7 this weekend, I gather it is expected to pass a law aimed at Taiwan."

"That's right. There's, er, something called the Anti-secession Law, which, we don't know much about it. It's been kept under wraps. Essentially 8, it is aiming to codify 9, to put into Chinese law Beijing Government's opposition 10 to any formal declaration of independence by Taiwan as if anybody hadn't quite got the message yet. This is, er, the Chinese government trying to send a warning to the Taiwanese government not to officially declare independence. They are quite limited in the way they can send these warnings. In the past, they've tried to lob missiles into the Taiwan Straits and that way of doing it has backfire. So they are putting it into law to show their opposition to any moves by the Taiwanese government. There's some suggestion that they might lay down some kind of new red line which Taiwan cannot cross without provoking Chinese military action. I suspect that may not happen because actually in the last few months, there's been rather a warming of relations across the Taiwan Straits with actually the first direct flights between the two in 55 years."

"And what are the other big issues being debated at this year's People's Congress?"

"Well, the National People's Congress is always accused of being a complete rubber stamp parliament, and certainly on the big issues, that is still very much true. No one is going to be opposing the big things that the Communist Party wants to push through. But on other issues, rather like Chinese society itself, there's a lot more space, a lot more room for discussion and I think on social issues especially, there is going to be a lot of debate during this ten-day Congress. Especially looking at one main issue. And that's the wealth gap, the income gap. The cities are becoming really quite prosperous in China and the countryside is lagging far behind. And that's leading to a lot of unrest, it’s leading to a lot of anger. And I think the Communist Party very much wants this issue debated. Thay want ideas as to how to close this, how to stop, of course, it’s in their interest to stop unrest because that will challenge their rules. So a lot of these social issues. Work safety will be another one that'll be discussed. Almost every month, we seem to hear that 200 more Chinese coal miners have died in some explosion. That's very embarrassing for the Communist Party. So a lot of those kind of social, perhaps, economic issues are going to be on the agenda."

Rob,thanks very much.

Thanks. R.

NPR's Rob Gifford speaking from Beijing.