WELL, YES: China’s Military Budget is Larger Than it Appears.

While Beijing is trying to tamp down the budget controversy, two things, which on their face look contradictory, are becoming apparent. At the same time, the rate of growth of military spending has dramatically slowed and China’s military is in the process of taking over a larger proportion of the Chinese government budget.

We begin with the fascinating rollout of the Chinese military budget. On Saturday, before the start of the annual meeting of the Congress, Fu Ying announced that China will spend “about 1.3 percent” of its gross domestic product on its military this year. That, she said, represented an increase of around 7 percent over 2016.

Fu, a veteran diplomat now serving as a spokeswoman for the Congress, did not give a total figure for the military budget.

The omission became a matter of public controversy on Sunday when, at the opening of the Congress, the Ministry of Finance released its report, which did not include a figure for military spending. “For the first time in decades, Beijing has not revealed its defense spending total for the year despite a stated commitment to transparency in military outlays,” wrote Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

Given how much control the People’s Liberation Army has over big sectors of the economy, and the level of corruption endemic to that sort of thing, Beijing probably doesn’t honestly know how much is being spent on (or by) the military.