China's overall defense expenditure remains at a relatively low level in the world, says a white paper titled China's Endeavors for Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation.

"This is not only reflected in the absolute amount of defense expenditure, but also in the percentages to the GDP and financial expenditure," says the white paper, issued by the Information Office of the State Council on Thursday.

China has always put emphasis on the control of its defense expenditure scale. The defense spending is appropriately allocated under the guideline of coordinated development of national defense and economy, says the white paper.

From 1979 to 2004, the percentages of China's defense expenditure to its financial expenditure of the same period followed a downward curve on the whole. It was 17.37 percent in 1979, and 7.76 percent in 2004, down by about 10 percentage points.

In 2004, China's defense expenditure registered 219.986 billion yuan (26.8 billion US dollars), accounting for 1.61 percent of that year's GDP and 7.76 percent of that year's financial expenditure. China's defense expenditure amounts to only 5.77 percent of that of the United States, 41.03 percent that of the United Kingdom, 75.65 percent that of France and 63.97 percent that of Japan.

China's defense budget for 2005 is 247.756 billion yuan (30.2 billion US dollars).

Based on the economic development and revenue growth, China has moderately increased its defense expenditure in recent years. However, the increase was relatively small. For most years since the 1990s, the growth rate of China's defense expenditure has been lower than that of the state financial expenditure, says the white paper.

Source: Xinhua