WASHINGTON, Nov 21 (AFP): China's souring foreign investment climate, "unfair" trade practices and increased military spending heightened tensions between the United States and Beijing in 2014, a US commission said yesterday.
Security ties between the two world powers deteriorated this year amid increased territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
These potential China-US military confrontations risk escalating into a "major political crisis," the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) said in its annual report to Congress.
Reports by the commission of former lawmakers, former officials, and other experts have in the past irritated officials in Beijing, where Washington opinions are always under a microscope.
The report said President Xi Jinping's government "made minimal progress in implementing (economic) reforms in 2014, and it remains unclear whether the Xi government will accelerate reform in 2015."
But it made substantial progress on the military development front, USCC reported, citing China's two decades of double-digit increases in its defense budget.
"This trend continued in 2014 with a 12.2 percent increase over the previous year, bringing China's announced projected defense budget to approximately $131.6 billion, though China's actual spending on defense is no doubt larger than this figure," USCC chairman Dennis Shea said while unveiling the report.
China policies fuel tensions with US
FE Team | Published: November 22, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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