China Premier Vows to Support Education

Chinese leaders and delegates attend the opening session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing's Great Hall of the People Saturday March 3, 2007. CPPCC Chairman Jia Qinglin opened China's annual legislative season by calling on non-communists to help ease tensions over the country's growing and politically explosive wealth gap.(AP Photo/Elizabeth Dalziel) (Elizabeth Dalziel - AP)

Wen also promised to improve China's dismal industrial safety record. Tens of thousands of people are killed in mine and industrial accidents each year in China.

On the military, Wen said the government would speed up the transformation of China's 2.3 million armed forces into a high-tech fighting force.

"We must energetically carry out the transformation from military training based on mechanized warfare to military training ... to increase the troop's ability to fight a defensive IT (information technology) war," he said.

On Sunday, Jiang Enzhu, a spokesman for China's national legislature, said the $44.94 billion defense budget for 2007 would mainly be spent on boosting wages and living allowances for members of the armed forces and on upgrading armaments.

The 2007 budget marks an increase of $6.84 billion over last year and is the third highest jump since 1990, surpassed only by increases of 21 percent in 1995 and 18 percent in 1994.

China's military is the world's largest and has been criticized abroad for not being open about its spending. Unlike the U.S., where Congress is required to approve the military budget, China's military is extremely secretive and rarely releases information on its spending.

The Pentagon believes China's total military spending may be much greater since the announced budget does not include key items such as weapons purchases.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who was visiting Beijing on Sunday, urged more dialogue between the Pentagon and the Chinese military "so that we have a bit better understanding of exactly what it is that the government of China has in mind with respect to its military modernization."

China's military spending is largely oriented toward Taiwan, which split with the mainland in 1949 amid civil war and has refused Beijing's offers for peaceful reunification with the mainland.

In his speech Monday, Wen repeated Beijing's opposition to efforts by Taiwan activists to make the island's de facto independence permanent. He said the mainland would promote direct transport and communications links across the Taiwan Strait.

"We firmly believe that with the efforts of all Chinese people, including our Taiwan compatriots, complete reunification of China will definitely be realized," he said.

Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, made unusually strong pro-independence remarks Sunday in a message apparently aimed at provoking rival China and shoring up his base.

"Taiwan should be independent," Chen said at a banquet marking the 25th anniversary of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a pro-independence group. "Taiwan is a country whose sovereignty lies outside the People's Republic of China."

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Associated Press writers Audra Ang in Beijing and Min Lee in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.