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A spokesman from the National People's Congress, Jiang Enzhu, told reporters that a defense budget of 417.77 billion yuan (US$58.8 billion) would be submitted to the congress for approval.
The nearly 3,000 members of China's national congress are scheduled to discuss and ultimately rubberstamp the budget at the end of its 13-day annual session which kicked off Wednesday morning.
This year's rise in military spending follows a 17.8 percent increase in 2007, when outlays officially reached 350.92 billion yuan (US$45 billion), giving the military its biggest financial boost in a decade.
Defense analysts in Europe, the United States and Japan estimate China's genuine spending level on the People's Liberation Army -- which includes all land, sea, air and space-based armed forces -- might be three times higher than the official figure.
A military attache from a European Union member country who had accurately forecast the spending increase percentage told UPI Monday, "What they're buying in hardware, software and services with all this money is a real mystery."
The budget announcement came less than a day after the Pentagon released its annual report on China's military buildup, warning that confusion about Beijing's intentions could spark instability in East Asia.
The Pentagon study reiterated statements that a lack of transparency in military and security affairs by China posed a risk to stability, "increasing the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation." The report noted that Chinese leaders "have yet to explain in detail the purposes and objectives of the PLA's modernizing military capabilities."
The U.S. report drew a swift response from China's Foreign Ministry, with spokesman Qin Gang saying Tuesday it was a "serious distortion of the facts" liable to damage Sino-U.S. ties. He repeated calls for the United States "to drop its Cold War mentality."
Jiang said increases in 2008 would go toward raising pay for men in uniform as well as covering increased costs of food and other commodities. The NPC spokesman listed "appropriate spending on training to keep pace with the military's needs" as China's third rationale.
His final point, "a moderate increase in armaments," was deemed key by the leadership to increase China's military capabilities for "conducting defensive operations under information technology conditions."
These conditions are described in the parlance of defense analyst as "C4ISR," an acronym representing "command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance."
Anticipating criticism of its unabated double-digit growth in defense spending for upwards of a decade, the spokesman provided a trio of explanations to deflect the perception that its military modernization represented a "China threat."
Jiang described the budget increase as moderate, saying it reflected the country's sustained, steady and fast economic growth and rapid buildup of government revenues. The increases were necessary to compensate for China's weak defense capabilities, he said.
Jiang dusted off figures that showed an annual decline in China's military spending by 5.83 percent between 1979 and 1989, but omitted certain pertinent historical facts.Cutbacks from 20-30 years ago were part of the policy by Communist Party stalwart Deng Xiaoping aimed at gradually downsizing the military by 2 million troops while simultaneously creating a million-man strong paramilitary security force, the People's Armed Police, using demobilized soldiers.
Deng's move was to streamline the absolute numbers, decreasing the quantity for a less unwieldy PLA, while simultaneously laying the groundwork to bolster quantitative military capabilities.
Jiang further defended the budget with a comparative analysis based on increased government revenues available during the tenure in office of the current supreme Chinese leader, Hu Jintao. The NPC spokesman did not provide figures for Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, under whose rein the upward trend of spending first began.
"Rates at which defense spending rose between 2003 and 2007 were lower than government revenues," he stated. Jiang said increases averaging 15.8 percent were "significantly lower" than the annual 22.1 percent by which government revenues increased.
The spokesman pointed out that the proportion of China's defense spending compared with its GDP and total government expenditures was less than that spent by the United States, Britain, France and Russia.
Jiang insisted that China's national defense policy was defensive in nature. "China's military capability is solely for the purpose of safeguarding independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and it does not pose a threat to any country," he said.
