BEIJING (Reuters) - China will boost military spending by 11.2 percent this year, the government said on Sunday, unveiling Beijing's first defence budget since President Barack Obama launched a policy "pivot" to reinforce U.S. influence across the Asia-Pacific.

The increase announced by parliament spokesman Li Zhaoxing will bring official outlays on the People's Liberation Army to 670.3 billion yuan (67.2 billion pounds) for 2012, after a 12.7 percent increase last year and a near-unbroken string of double-digit rises across two decades .

Beijing's public budget is widely thought by foreign experts to undercount its real spending on military modernisation, which has unnerved Asian neighbours and drawn repeated calls from Washington for China to share more about its intentions.

Li said the world has nothing to fear, and the money spent on the PLA paled in comparison with the Pentagon's outlays.

"You can see that we have 1.3 billion people with a large land areas and a long coastline, but our outlays on defence are quite low compared to other major countries," Li told a news conference before the annual full session of the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-controlled legislature that will approve the budget.

"China's limited military power is for the sake of preserving national sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity," said Li, a former foreign minister. "Fundamentally, it constitutes no threat to other countries."

Asian neighbours, however, have been nervous about Beijing's expanding military, and this latest double-digit rise could reinforce disquiet in Japan, India, Southeast Asia and self-ruled Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory.

Obama has sought to reassure Asian allies that the United States will stay a key player in the area, and the Pentagon has said it will "rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region".

"Eleven percent, for a Chinese defence budget, is what I would characterise as a reasonably sizeable increase," said C. Uday Bhaskar, a former director of India's Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi.

"It also, I would say, goes beyond the normal pegging we do for inflation, and it would be noted with great interest and concern by China's principal interlocutors," he said.

Obama's proposed budget for the fiscal year of 2013 calls for a Pentagon base budget of $525.4 billion, about $5.1 billion less than approved for 2012.

"GROWING BOLDER"

Beijing has sought to balance long-standing wariness about U.S. intentions with steady relations with Washington, especially as both governments focus on domestic politics this year, when Obama faces a re-election fight and China's ruling Communist Party undergoes a leadership handover.

But the U.S. "pivot" has fanned unease in China, with some PLA officers calling it an effort to fence in their country and frustrate Beijing's territorial claims.

China has advertised its long-term military ambitions with shows of new hardware, including its first test flight of a stealth fighter jet in early 2011 and its launch of a fledgling aircraft carrier in August -- both trials of technologies that remain years from deployment.

Beijing is also building new submarines, surface ships and anti-ship ballistic missiles as part of its naval modernization.

China's military build-up is likely to continue "unabated", irrespective of recent U.S. moves in Asia, the U.S. military commander for the Asia-Pacific region, Admiral Robert Willard, said on Tuesday.

Japan and China have locked horns over islands each claims in the East China Sea; Vietnam, the Philippines and other nations have challenged Beijing over claims to swathes of the South China Sea that could be rich in oil and gas.

A spokesman for Philippines' Department of National Defence, Peter Paul Galvez, said the latest increase in PLA spending was not cause for alarm. Others were more anxious.

"China shares its land border with 14 countries; it used to make sense that a country in such a position maintains strong conventional forces," said Kazuya Sakamoto, a professor at Osaka University in Japan who researches international security.

"But in this nuclear age, it does not really make sense that China, a nuclear-armed country, continues to build up its military at such a pace."

SYMBOLIC VALUE, PRACTICAL LIMITATIONS

The Pentagon estimated China's real total military outlays in 2010 were over $160 billion, which would easily make it the world's second biggest defence spender after the United States.

But China's military modernisation should be kept in perspective, said Michael Beckley, a research fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center, who has studied the strength of China and the United States.

"There's no doubt China's new hardware has important symbolic value and, at least in the case of the ASBM, important coercive value - the U.S. navy has to think twice now before getting too close to China's shores," Beckley said in emailed comments, referring to China's anti-ship ballistic missile.

"But the PLA's progress needs to be viewed in the context of China's low level of economic development," he added.

"China's economic weaknesses constrain its ability to produce cohesive military systems that link weapons and soldiers to sensors, satellites and command centres."

($1 = 6.2982 Chinese yuan)

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing, and Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo, and Rosemarie Francisco in Manila; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Frazzled wrote:they're hiring consultants as fast as they can?

ShumaGorath wrote:

Frazzled wrote:they're hiring consultants as fast as they can?

Xe is based in China now, maybe they can steal a couple hundred mil from them too. Hell, so is Halliburton.

Frazzled wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Frazzled wrote:they're hiring consultants as fast as they can?

Xe is based in China now, maybe they can steal a couple hundred mil from them too. Hell, so is Halliburton.

Sorry, old business joke.

Who's Xe? You know Xe backwards is Ex, which is never good.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:All in all, the US military is streets ahead of China, not just in technology, but in the unsung heroes (engineers, medics, logistics) and yet...I can't help but feel the sleeping giant is stirring. Sorry, just been watching Tora Tora Tora again

ShumaGorath wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Frazzled wrote:they're hiring consultants as fast as they can?

Xe is based in China now, maybe they can steal a couple hundred mil from them too. Hell, so is Halliburton.

Sorry, old business joke.

Who's Xe? You know Xe backwards is Ex, which is never good.

Xe is the company formerly known as Blackwater. International PMC responsible for several war crimes in Iraq. They got so unpopular that they changed their name and moved. It worked for the most part, they still do their barely overseen murder for hire thing and most people don't know they still exist.

Castiel wrote:I'm not worried yet.In this day in age I think that the costs of China starting a war with America or Europe would just be too high. South Korea is more plausible, but again I reckon that's drag in the US and Europe. Don't see it happening.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Castiel wrote:I'm not worried yet.In this day in age I think that the costs of China starting a war with America or Europe would just be too high. South Korea is more plausible, but again I reckon that's drag in the US and Europe. Don't see it happening.

If china declared war on south korea it would lose a major trading partner and be at war with almost the entirety of the west.

Castiel wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Castiel wrote:I'm not worried yet.In this day in age I think that the costs of China starting a war with America or Europe would just be too high. South Korea is more plausible, but again I reckon that's drag in the US and Europe. Don't see it happening.

If china declared war on south korea it would lose a major trading partner and be at war with almost the entirety of the west.

Exactly my point. I don't see them starting a war any time soon.

Ahtman wrote:Wars have only ever started for rational reasons that both sides agreed upon.

Easy E wrote:Robot Jox was prophetic.

LordofHats wrote:

Easy E wrote:Robot Jox was prophetic.

I'm shocked someone other than me actually remembers that movie, though I was actually thinking of G Gundam

LordofHats wrote:

Ahtman wrote:Wars have only ever started for rational reasons that both sides agreed upon.

Obviously the solution is for every country to build a giant stereotypically themed fighting robot and then hold a tournament. Winner takes all (the bases)

Albatross wrote:We're a small wind-swept archipelago in the North Sea with around 70 million inhabitants...

Albatross wrote:Their defence expenditure is now twice as much as ours, big deal. We're a small wind-swept archipelago in the North Sea with around 70 million inhabitants - they're fething enormous! It stands to reason that they would want to increase their capabilities.

Joey wrote:We just need to stop pretending that we're capable of fighting a land war overseas and simply rely on reserves.

sebster wrote:Nations don't just buld armies to go to war with the US. They build them so when a situation arises that requires the deployment of troops, then people aren't forced to go to the US and convince them they need to do it. After dragging on for decades, and with failed intervention by India already, the Chinese decided the region was important to their future energy pipeline and stepped in, promptly resolving the issue.

Americans are so weird with their army. They're so bitter about being needed for every engagement and continue to insist other people ought to be doing it themselves, but if anyone increases their budget to come within even a fifth of US expenditures they freak the hell out.