Laxman Kumar Behera | 26 Mar 2010
NEW DELHI -- Recently, both China and India increased their official defense budgets for fiscal year 2010, to $78 billion and $32 billion, respectively (although according to Western observers, China's actual military spending is up to three times the official figures). In doing so, Beijing raised its defense allocation by 7.5 percent, and New Delhi by just under 4 percent.
Besides the differences in absolute budget and percentage growth, the two countries also demonstrate contrasting approaches to achieving their overall military objectives. For China, defense spending is a means toward achieving long-term power ambitions and military supremacy, while India is caught in an exercise of resource allocation, devoid of long-term goals. The result, visible in the two countries' military capabilities, is distinctly favorable to China.
Before this year, China's official defense spending witnessed double-digit growth for the last 20 years. The sustained increase in spending was calibrated to support Beijing's strategy of achieving Comprehensive National Power (CNP), which includes both soft and hard power. As Beijing's biennial defense White Paper shows, spending grew at an annual average of 14.5 percent between 1988 and 1997. Allocations during this period were meant to "make up for the inadequacy of defense development" that existed in earlier years, when defense spending was subordinated to economic development. Once the initial deficiency was addressed, China then stepped up its spending by an annual average of 15.9 percent per year for the next 10 years to 2007, and by nearly 18 percent in both 2008 and 2009. Much of the post-1997 allocation was directed to achieving mastery of network-centric and precision-guided modern warfare, paying close attention to lessons learned from the overwhelming U.S. military supremacy in the first Gulf War.
Chinese defense spending is noteworthy in that investments in capabilities have gone hand in hand with organizational and doctrinal reforms in the People's Liberation Army, increased sophistication of the domestic defense industry, and special emphasis on research and development (R&D). At no point did China let money become a constraint on its modernization and reform drives. For instance, when the global financial crisis spread to the Chinese defense industry, Beijing quickly responded by infusing it with a $60 billion stimulus package.
The decades-long effort has paid rich dividends for China, in terms of enhanced military capability with a reach beyond its immediate neighborhood. As the U.S. Defense Department's 2009 annual report, "Military Power of the People's Republic of China," states, the combined investments and reforms over the years have resulted in military capabilities "that are changing regional military balances . . . with implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region." The deployment of advanced weaponry, such as indigenously designed and built nuclear-powered submarines, and the successful tests of an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon and anti-ballistic missile capability are a few telling examples of Beijing's efforts.
By contrast, there is hardly a consistent pattern in India's defense spending over the last two decades. In some years, the defense budget registered growth of as high as 34 percent, and in others, as low as half a percent. This lack of linear growth in defense expenditures is indicative of deficiencies in the existing planning process. While China produces a biennial defense white paper delineating its national security objectives, India undertakes no such exercise. In its absence, India's armed forces are left to compile their own wish-lists into short-, medium- and long-term planning documents. However, these documents are often contested due to lack of rigor, inter-service competition over priorities, or the absence of linkage to self-reliance and national security goals. As a result, they are seldom approved by higher political authorities. The annual defense budget that emerges from such a process is ultimately decided by the availability of resources, competing demands from other ministries, and broader fiscal conditions, with scant regard to the country's long-term military requirements.
The absence of a long-term vision for strategic planning is perhaps most visible in India's lack of progress in its indigenous defense industry, a key component of New Delhi's -- or, for that matter, any country's -- cherished hard power. It is noteworthy that India long ago announced a goal of progressively enhancing its self-reliance in defense production to 70 percent by 2005. But today, it still struggles to reach from 30 percent to 35 percent. As a consequence, the country is paying nearly $5 billion to $6 billion per year to foreign suppliers, who are quite happy to profit at the cost of the indigenous Indian defense industry's progress.
Both China and India exercise overwhelming state control over their defense enterprises, but here again the contrast is revealing. Beijing has tried to infuse greater competitiveness in its industry by focusing on fundamental reforms, based on the "Four Mechanisms" of competition, evaluation, supervision, and encouragement. Meanwhile, India continues to subsidize the inefficiencies of its public-sector production and R&D entities, with reform measures recommended by various committees -- most notably the Kelkar Committee of 2005 -- pursued in neither letter nor spirit. Private sector contractors, who were allowed to participate in defense production beginning in 2001, continue to be discriminated against by the Defense Ministry compared to their state-owned counterparts, under cover of secrecy and protectionism.
Given the above sorry state of affairs, it is not surprising that, despite having established its first armament factory two centuries ago, India cannot claim a single company worth mentioning among the globally ranked industry leaders. It is also not surprising that while China today boasts of flying its own fighter aircraft, New Delhi is busy test-flying planes produced by six other non-Indian companies in a desperate bid to bridge the capability gap with its northern neighbor. In light of China's fast progress in expanding its military capability, New Delhi's desperation is only likely to grow more acute if it doesn't get its act together.
Laxman Kumar Behera is an associate fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis in New Delhi, India.
WPR Article | Rising Dragon, Slumbering Elephant: Chinese and Indian Defense Planning
NEW DELHI -- Recently, both China and India increased their official defense budgets for fiscal year 2010, to $78 billion and $32 billion, respectively (although according to Western observers, China's actual military spending is up to three times the official figures). In doing so, Beijing raised its defense allocation by 7.5 percent, and New Delhi by just under 4 percent.
Besides the differences in absolute budget and percentage growth, the two countries also demonstrate contrasting approaches to achieving their overall military objectives. For China, defense spending is a means toward achieving long-term power ambitions and military supremacy, while India is caught in an exercise of resource allocation, devoid of long-term goals. The result, visible in the two countries' military capabilities, is distinctly favorable to China.
Before this year, China's official defense spending witnessed double-digit growth for the last 20 years. The sustained increase in spending was calibrated to support Beijing's strategy of achieving Comprehensive National Power (CNP), which includes both soft and hard power. As Beijing's biennial defense White Paper shows, spending grew at an annual average of 14.5 percent between 1988 and 1997. Allocations during this period were meant to "make up for the inadequacy of defense development" that existed in earlier years, when defense spending was subordinated to economic development. Once the initial deficiency was addressed, China then stepped up its spending by an annual average of 15.9 percent per year for the next 10 years to 2007, and by nearly 18 percent in both 2008 and 2009. Much of the post-1997 allocation was directed to achieving mastery of network-centric and precision-guided modern warfare, paying close attention to lessons learned from the overwhelming U.S. military supremacy in the first Gulf War.
Chinese defense spending is noteworthy in that investments in capabilities have gone hand in hand with organizational and doctrinal reforms in the People's Liberation Army, increased sophistication of the domestic defense industry, and special emphasis on research and development (R&D). At no point did China let money become a constraint on its modernization and reform drives. For instance, when the global financial crisis spread to the Chinese defense industry, Beijing quickly responded by infusing it with a $60 billion stimulus package.
The decades-long effort has paid rich dividends for China, in terms of enhanced military capability with a reach beyond its immediate neighborhood. As the U.S. Defense Department's 2009 annual report, "Military Power of the People's Republic of China," states, the combined investments and reforms over the years have resulted in military capabilities "that are changing regional military balances . . . with implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region." The deployment of advanced weaponry, such as indigenously designed and built nuclear-powered submarines, and the successful tests of an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon and anti-ballistic missile capability are a few telling examples of Beijing's efforts.
By contrast, there is hardly a consistent pattern in India's defense spending over the last two decades. In some years, the defense budget registered growth of as high as 34 percent, and in others, as low as half a percent. This lack of linear growth in defense expenditures is indicative of deficiencies in the existing planning process. While China produces a biennial defense white paper delineating its national security objectives, India undertakes no such exercise. In its absence, India's armed forces are left to compile their own wish-lists into short-, medium- and long-term planning documents. However, these documents are often contested due to lack of rigor, inter-service competition over priorities, or the absence of linkage to self-reliance and national security goals. As a result, they are seldom approved by higher political authorities. The annual defense budget that emerges from such a process is ultimately decided by the availability of resources, competing demands from other ministries, and broader fiscal conditions, with scant regard to the country's long-term military requirements.
The absence of a long-term vision for strategic planning is perhaps most visible in India's lack of progress in its indigenous defense industry, a key component of New Delhi's -- or, for that matter, any country's -- cherished hard power. It is noteworthy that India long ago announced a goal of progressively enhancing its self-reliance in defense production to 70 percent by 2005. But today, it still struggles to reach from 30 percent to 35 percent. As a consequence, the country is paying nearly $5 billion to $6 billion per year to foreign suppliers, who are quite happy to profit at the cost of the indigenous Indian defense industry's progress.
Both China and India exercise overwhelming state control over their defense enterprises, but here again the contrast is revealing. Beijing has tried to infuse greater competitiveness in its industry by focusing on fundamental reforms, based on the "Four Mechanisms" of competition, evaluation, supervision, and encouragement. Meanwhile, India continues to subsidize the inefficiencies of its public-sector production and R&D entities, with reform measures recommended by various committees -- most notably the Kelkar Committee of 2005 -- pursued in neither letter nor spirit. Private sector contractors, who were allowed to participate in defense production beginning in 2001, continue to be discriminated against by the Defense Ministry compared to their state-owned counterparts, under cover of secrecy and protectionism.
Given the above sorry state of affairs, it is not surprising that, despite having established its first armament factory two centuries ago, India cannot claim a single company worth mentioning among the globally ranked industry leaders. It is also not surprising that while China today boasts of flying its own fighter aircraft, New Delhi is busy test-flying planes produced by six other non-Indian companies in a desperate bid to bridge the capability gap with its northern neighbor. In light of China's fast progress in expanding its military capability, New Delhi's desperation is only likely to grow more acute if it doesn't get its act together.
Laxman Kumar Behera is an associate fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis in New Delhi, India.
WPR Article | Rising Dragon, Slumbering Elephant: Chinese and Indian Defense Planning
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