World
7.6 percent defence budget rise in China
Beijing:China on Saturday announced the country’s lowest defence budget increase in six years in the wake of rising economic headwinds and last year’s massive drawdown of service people.
According to a budget report to the national legislature annual session, the government plans to raise the 2016 defence budget by 7.6 percent to 954 billion yuan (about $146 billion), Xinhua news agency reported.
The increase last year was 10.1 percent.
The fresh raise will make China the second largest defence spender.
China’s military expenditure had seen a five-year run of double-digit increases between 2011 and 2015. The country saw the defence budget growing by 7.5 percent in 2010.
Friday’s report did not offer further breakdown of the figure nor explain the rationale behind the abated growth, although some officials and military experts have pointed to slowing growth in the world’s second largest economy.
General Chen Zhou linked the forecast-beating slowdown with China’s “economic and social status quo” in an interview with Xinhua.
“A single-digit rise following years of double-digit growth is a prudent, moderate move,” said Chen, adding that there are no “hidden” expenses in the country’s military spending.
Faced with increasing economic headwinds with uncertainty clouding global recovery, China saw its economy expanding 6.9 percent year on year in 2015, the slowest in a quarter of a century, weighed down by a property market downturn, falling trade and weak factory activity.
The government put this year’s growth target between 6.5 and 7 percent, compared with last year’s “approximately 7 percent” goal.
The cut of 300,000 service people announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2015 might also have helped drive down the defence budget growth figure.
China will make its military more revolutionary, modern and better structured, strengthen in a coordinated way military preparedness on all fronts and for all scenarios and work meticulously to ensure combat readiness and border, coastal and air defence control, Premier Li Keqiang said in the government work report to the national legislature annual session.
Logistics and equipment development will be stepped up and the military’s size and structure will undergo reforms, he said.
To modernise management and administration, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) inaugurated a General Command for the army, the PLA Rocket Force and the PLA Strategic Support Force in December. In February, it replaced seven military area commands with five PLA theatre commands.
“The PLA is in the key phase of deepening reforms,” General Luo Yuan said.
“A moderate increase in the military budget is necessary,” he said.
Though recent rises in defence budgets surpassed GDP growth, China’s military expenditure in 2015 accounted for 1.33 percent of GDP, well below the world’s average of 2.6 percent.
The per capita military spending is even less, representing only about 5.6 percent that of the US, 11 percent that of Britain and 25 percent that of Japan.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
Cheers and Cheers: Barzilla’s Joyful Ode to Inclusivity and Celebration
Casino Days Reveal Internal Data on Most Popular Smartphones
Meghalaya Reserves Legalized Gambling and Sports Betting for Tourists
Lockdowns in China Force Urban Communities to Defy Censorship and Vent Frustration Online
What monkey fled with a bag containing evidence in it: Read full story
IPL 20202 UPDATE: KXIP vs MI IPL Dream11 Team Prediction for Today Match, Update Point Table of all Team.
In a Live debate AAP leader Syed Asad Abbas hurls abuses to BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma.
‘India’s Most Wanted’ trailer out Arjun Kapoor on hunt of Osama-Bin-Laden
Time to move on: Sonakshi on Shatrughan’s joining Congress
