China's defense budget, an indicator of confidence in peaceful reunification with Taiwan

Editor's note: The Taiwan question has always been the most important and sensitive issue in China-U.S. relations. Zhou Bo, senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy of Tsinghua University, is invited for this episode of First Voice to share his perspective on how China views the current Taiwan question after the Xi-Biden summit at San Francisco. 

Zhou Bo: For Taiwan Straits to remain peaceful, the best thing the United States can do is to let the Chinese mainland believe that peace is still possible across the strait.

I would say that the Chinese mainland is still patient on this issue (with) the fact that we have never talked about timetable of peaceful reunification, and (our) defense budget for decades is under two percent.

Defense budget is very important for you actually to read the real intention of a country in military domain, because defense budget would not lie.

It tells you a lot about how this country considered its own security environment, how it thinks about its surrounding situations, or how it thinks about its rivals.

What does Chinese defense budget tell you? It is so sustainable and so stable, because they are being around 1.5 percent of China's GDP. It is actually lower than NATO standard of two percent of GDP. And we have never seen a drastic increase or decrease (in) this budget. (It) tells a lot about China's confidence in itself, in its environment. Or it also tells a lot about our confidence in the eventual peaceful reunification.

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