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More Money, More Power for Asian Militaries - Southeast Asia Real Time - WSJ
Four Asian countries – China (2), Japan (5), India (7) and South Korea (10) – made the top-10 list of global defense spenders.
The U.S. still spends far more than any other country – $582.4 billion – but its share of the global tally fell to 37.9% after peaking at around 42% in 2010.
China's consolidation at No. 2 after the U.S., comes as no surprise. Beijing has been increasing its defense budget by around 10% a year, propelling its latest military spending to $139.2 billion, according to the report.
Those outlays came to more than half the Philippines' gross domestic product of around $254 billion, making the country's $1.8 billion defense budget look minute at a time when it's locked in a tense territorial dispute with Beijing.
The disparity underscores the uneven military might between the two countries, and raises questions about how the Philippines would defend its maritime claims in the South China Sea should China decide to use military force to assert its ownership over the disputed waters.
By 2015, IHS Jane's predicted that defense spending in China would trump that of the U.K., France and Germany combined, but increases may be pegged back to keep pace with slowing economic growth. China's GDP growth slowed to 7.6% in 2013 compared with consistent double-digit growth for most of the previous two decades, and growth rates will probably fall still further.
IHS Jane's forecasts China's military spending at $159.6 billion in 2015, which would equal 7% increases for each of the next two years.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
A Chinese-made Chengdu Jian-J7 fighter jet on display at the People's Liberation Army Aviation Museum in Beijing, on Dec. 4, 2013.
India's economic growth also slowed last year, to around 4.5%-5%, compared with 6%-10% in recent years. Even so, New Delhi – understandably reluctant to fall too far behind neighboring China, especially amid tense border disputes – decided to scrap a plan that would have slashed military expenditures to even out its federal budget deficit.
It spent $46.2 billion on military outlays in 2013, about one-third the amount spent by China.
Japan, too, joined the regional trend, increasing its defense budget to $58.6 billion after a decade in which such spending had more or less flat-lined. Like India, territorial disputes with China appeared to be a significant driving factor.
South Korea (10), Australia (12) and Taiwan (16) rounded out the Asia-Pacific entries in the top-20 list of global defense spenders. Taiwan's budget, at $14.8 billion, is now a tenth the size of China's, down from half in the early 2000s.
