China's defence budget will soar by a massive 17.8 percent in 2007, a senior official announced Sunday, as the United States said it wanted to know more about the Asian giant's intentions.
China's armed forces will get 350.9 billion yuan (about 45 billion dollars) for 2007, a rise of nearly 53 billion yuan over actual spending in 2006, said Jiang Enzhu, a spokesman for the National People's Congress, the legislature.
"In recent years, China has gradually been boosting its military expenditures," he told reporters at a briefing in Beijing. "Our nation has all along rationally set out national defence spending by coordinating national defence with economic development."
Just hours after the announcement, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who was on a visit to Beijing, told reporters he would like to know more about what China plans to do with new military hardware.
"The way I phrase our concern is the concern about transparency and the desire to have a more extensive dialogue with China on what their military build-up involves, what the doctrine is that underlies it, and what their intentions are," he said.
Little more than a week ago, US Vice President Dick Cheney said China's military build-up clashed with its repeated claims to be a peaceful power.
Cheney cited a January ballistic missile test by China that destroyed one of its own satellites in space as evidence of the nation's increasing miniaturisation.
The new budget figures came a day after China voiced its opposition to US plans to sell 450 air and ground missiles to Beijing's arch rival, Taiwan. A Taiwan government spokesman said Sunday the budget increase marked "China's rising threat" to the island, and that real expenditure could be higher.