Beijing to boost security spending as Xi fights dissent, terrorism

Chinese military officers arrive at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

China plans to raise central government spending on domestic security by nearly 11 percent, more than the increase in defense spending, as President Xi Jinping clamps down on corruption, dissent and separatist violence.
The central government plans to spend 154.2 billion yuan (USD24.6 billion) on public security in 2015, up from last year’s target of 138.9 billion yuan, according to a Finance Ministry report distributed yesterday before the start of the annual session of the National People’s Congress.
Total spending on public security, which includes everything from spying on dissidents and journalists to defending against terrorist attacks, is actually much higher as the bulk of the outlays come from China’s regions and provinces. Deadly attacks that the government has linked to ethnic Uighur separatists have spurred spending at a time when Xi is also using the security apparatus to rein in public challenges to Communist Party rule.
“Most of the terrorism expenditure has gone into place by 2015,” said Li Wei, head of security and anti-terrorism research at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. “That has covered anti-terror facilities and technology, and personnel training.”
The Chinese government has plunked down “a massive amount of public money” in upgrading its counter-terrorism capabilities after two high-profile terrorist attacks, the first in Tiananmen Square in 2013 followed by the 2014 assault on a train station in the southwestern city of Kunming that killed dozens, Li said. The attacks also led the government to prepare the country’s first anti-terrorism law, which will expand domestic intelligence gathering operations. The bill is likely to be passed later this year.
The increase in central government spending on security compares with a 10.1 percent boost in defense spending to 886.9 billion yuan in 2015. Still, total security spending may be even more than the outlay for the military when the region and provincial expenditures are factored in.
Yesterday’s report did not give those contributions, and the government has been playing down the total spending number in recent years, because money spent in “weiwen,” or maintaining stability, has fueled talk of a surveillance state, said Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at Beijing Institute of Technology.
Presenting only the central government spending level “can somewhat dilute the negative impression that’s usually associated with weiwen,” Hu said.
Premier Li Keqiang in his speech to the legislature yesterday said the increase in the public security budget this year marked an rise of 4.3 percent, without explaining the discrepancy with the 11 percent rise in the Finance Ministry figures. Li may have been comparing the 2015 target with actual 2014 spending, rather than what was originally budgeted.
The domestic security spending had risen rapidly between 2007 and 2012 under former Politburo Standing Committee member and security chief Zhou Yongkang. Zhou is now in detention after becoming the highest-profile target of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign. Bloomberg