China lowers growth target, ups military budget to defy slowing economy

China’s Premier Li Keqiang unveiled a lower growth target, increased the defence budget and pledged tighter environmental controls as he opened parliament’s annual session in Beijing on Thursday. The country’s growth target of about 7 per cent is down from last year’s 7.5 per cent, but in line with efforts to create a “moderately prosperous society,” said Premier Li Keqiang. China’s national defence budget will grow 10.1 per cent in 2015, the lowest increase in five years. Beijing plans to raise its military spending to $141.4 billion, according to a budget report to be submitted to the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the Communist-controlled legislature. Last year’s increase was 12.2 per cent, official data showed. Analysts believe China’s actual military spending is significantly higher than publicised, with the Pentagon estimating it at between $135 billion and $215 billion in 2012.

We must keep to the Party’s goal of strengthening the armed forced under the new conditions. [We must] uphold the fundamental principle of the party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces.

Opening speech

Li promised to give entrepreneurs and foreign investors a bigger role in an economy that after three decades of market-oriented reforms still is dominated by government-owned banks, oil producers and other companies. Li also promised to cut pollution that is choking China’s cities and improvements in a range of other social areas, including education and poverty alleviation. The government aims to reduce carbon intensity, or emissions per unit of economic output, by 3.1 per cent and will cut emissions of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants, Li said. In the countryside, authorities will try to bring electricity to the homes of the remaining 200,000 people who still lack it, the premier said.

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