China's military grows fat sitting in its baracks, but Washington still frets.

China's Hu in control of rapidly modernising military

BEIJING (AFP) - After five years in power, President Hu Jintao has finally gained unquestioned control of China's massive military while transforming it into wealthy, high-tech fighting force, analysts said.

Although Hu was named Communist Party chief in 2002 and president in 2003, he did not inherit the mantle of commander-in-chief until a year later and questions had lingered over who commanded the allegiance of the country's rapidly modernising, 2.3-million-strong People's Liberation Army.

But key military appointments by Hu in the run-up to the five-yearly Communist Party Congress that is due to end Sunday in Beijing should help dispel any questions, experts said.

They include a new general chief of staff, the PLA's highest uniformed position, and new commanders of its naval and air forces.

"It looks like he has full control over personnel now. He has continued to raise the military budget and will continue that. He's well established in power now," said Arthur Ding, a Chinese military expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technology University.

Hu's military priorities were shown in the selection of General Chen Bingde as general chief of staff, observers said.

Chen previously directed the unit that controlled the country's fast-developing space programme, and was a top commander of eastern China forces viewed as crucial to a potential conflict with Taiwan.

"(Chen's selection) was a tough signal to Taiwan and it emphasises the military's modernisation in the high-tech era," said Cheng Li, a scholar with the US Brookings Institution.

Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, upped spending to lift the PLA from a backward, bloated force to a modern military, and Hu has taken the baton with gusto.

The armed forces received 45 billion dollars in funding this year, an annual 17.8 percent increase and Hu has promised more in future years.

The spending has opened new high-tech vistas for the former peasant force.

Last year it unveiled an advanced new homegrown fighter and in January made China only the third country to successfully test a satellite-killer missile, among other new high-tech toys.

"China's technology level is still below that of the United States and Europe, but they are making steady progress," said Kevin Pollpeter, a China military expert at the US-based Centre for Intelligence Research and Analysis.

Questions over Hu's command of the military stemmed from his failure to take the mantle of CMC chairman upon becoming president in 2003.

Jiang surrendered that post a year later, but his appointees remained in top posts.

Experts say there was little risk of the military not obeying Hu up to now.

The PLA once occupied a central political role and wielded huge economic muscle through a massive, and now-disbanded, business empire.

But although the PLA was born of the Communist Party, it is apolitical now, Pollpeter said.

"The PLA is increasingly satisfied to remain a professional military that does not get involved in domestic politics. They realise they have a lot of work to do to make themselves into a modern force and getting into politics only distracts from that," he said.

Still, concern over PLA allegiance remains valid, especially as unrest grows in China over widening wealth disparity, corruption and other ills, said a Western military attache in Beijing.

He pointed out that similar issues gave rise to the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, which the PLA violently suppressed.

"What if there is another Tiananmen? Or China gets embroiled in a military conflict? Anything can happen and the PLA could move back to something like its former prominence," the attache said.