China News Roundup

I've been sadly remiss in my duties as a China news aggregator of late. My apologies. Unfortunately, some very interesting stuff has been happening, too!

First off, Tung Chee-Hwa, the Beijing-appointed governor of Hong Kong, has resigned. He won't be missed. As incompetent as he was unpopular, neither Beijing nor the people of HK will be sad to see the last of him. Largely blamed for the fiasco that was the security bill of 2003, Tung's job was basically to give the appearance that Beijing was going to let things proceed in HK the way they had pre-1997. Problem is, every time Tung had a problem in HK, he would run to Beijing for help. This annoyed Beijing and infuriated HK. So it's good news that he's being promoted in to a position of exactly zero power, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

However, as this Telegraph piece nicely sums up, there is a repressive angle to all this intrigue, as well. I'm not sure how much weight to give this commentary, but it's certainly credible that Beijing is trying to forestall the democrats in HK by forcing a new governor on them for five years. On the other hand, I've written before about how dangerous these kinds of games are for Beijing. "People power" of the sort seen in Beirut recently has already proved successful in HK, and could very well again. If Beijing's trying to clamp down on HK, they might inadvertently spark off serious unrest in China.

Next, the PRC has announced that military spending will increase by another double-digit increment this year, 12.6%. This brings the total to an official $30 billion. Unfortunately, official figures are nearly useless, because they don't include a number of important factors, like arms purchases. Seriously. I'm thinking the Pentagon could slim it's budget down substantially using this method... Even if we take some of the larger estimates of total Chinese military spending, there are some things that need to be kept in mind: First off, even if Beijing is spending closer to $100 billion (as some analysts claim) a large (and growing) fraction of that is pensions, as Beijing shrank the military dramatically during the 1980s. Another large fraction is the People's Armed Police, who are technically a branch of the military, but are really a dumping ground for ex-soldiers who aren't old enough for pensions yet. My impression is that their role in China is similar in many ways to the RCMP. So even if we take the large estimate of $100 billion, I would be surprised if more than $60 billion of that is actual "military" spending. This is obviously still larger than the official $30 billion, but it's still puny compared to the US's $400 billion. And it's only slightly larger than Japan's near-$50 billion. And before you worry about China-Japan comparisons, keep in mind that in qualitative terms, Japan's SDF are almost certainly superior to China today.

The more worrisome trend in Beijing's budget increase is not the money per se, but the possibility of an Asian arms race between China, Taiwan, Japan, and maybe South Korea if things get truly out of hand. Here's a place where the Americans could play a constructive role, but instead the recent talk of "containing" China has only exacerbated things. With the EU set to lift the arms ban on China (which was basically a joke to begin with), my biggest concern is that the US will begin selling more weaponry to the Taiwanese, or rattle some sabers some other way. Needless to say, I think this would be counterproductive.