By Christopher Carbone, Fox News
China’s air force staged another round of drills in the disputed South China Sea and Western Pacific, military officials said Sunday, labeling such exercises as the best preparation for war.
The country of 1.3 billion people is the midst of a massive modernization overseen by President Xi Jinping to make its military, which is already the planet’s largest in terms of sheer personnel, a “world class force” and will boost defense spending by 8.1 percent this year, the biggest hike in three years.
China is thought to be most heavily focused on improving its air force and navy, doing everything from building stealth fighters to adding aircraft carriers, although the country has long insisted that it has no hostile intentions.
“China is committed to a path of peaceful development, and China pursues a defense policy that is defensive in nature,” Zhang Yesui, a vice foreign minister and spokesman for the National People’s Congress, said at a news conference in early March. “China’s development will not pose a threat to other countries.”
The military expenditures, combined with the maneuvering and saber-rattling in the crucial South China Sea waterway and near Taiwan, have prompted concerns in Asian and U.S. corridors of power.
But Andrew Erickson, a professor at the Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute in Newport, R.I., told the Washington Post that China’s growing defense budget enables it to achieve the biggest and fastest shipbuilding expansion in modern history; the world’s largest navy, coast guard and maritime militia by number of ships; and the world’s largest conventional ballistic and cruise missile force.
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