China will in September finalize issues concerning a hotline
with the United States for handling emergency, a senior Chinese
military official told the Sixth Asia Security Summit Saturday.
Zhang Qinsheng, deputy chief of General Staff of the People's
Liberation Army of China, also the highest-ranking Chinese officer
to have attended the three-day security summit, known as the
Shangri-La Dialogue, made the remarks at the second plenary session
titled "India and China: building international stability."
He said the technical issues had been settled and he would
attend a meeting in Washington in September to "finalize" the
agreement.
On China's defense budget for 2007 of 350.921 billion yuan
(about US$44.9 billion), he said the figure is "true and
authentic".
Then he elaborated on the issue in response to the audience's
question, saying that China is a large country in terms of
territorial size and population, so it needs a proportionate
military capability.
He also said that in August 2.3 million army men will change
their uniforms and that the spending will be a large part of the
increased budget.
"China also has another problem, which is the Taiwan issue," he
said, adding that "some people in Taiwan are still dreaming about
secession. So Chinese military must be prepared to cope with this
kind of threat. If anything happens, China's military must be
prepared to respond."
He said that China's defense policy which is defensive in nature
is prescribed politically by the peace and development model.
"It is armed to develop limited military power," he said, adding
that "it is a peace policy."
The three-day Shangri-La Dialogue, organized by the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies, opened on Friday. It
gathered defense ministers and top officials from 26 countries and
regions in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe to address major
regional security issues and defense cooperation.
(Xinhua News Agency June 2, 2007)