All we can do about China's army is smile nicely The Australian's precis of the Gillard Government's new white paper on defence sums it up: ...More conciliatory to China than the 2009 White Paper. Welcomes China's rise and the modernisation of its military as a legitimate outcome of its growth. Unlike the 2009 White Paper, new document makes no commitment to a particular level of defence funding. Or put it this way: be nice to China, because we're now too broke to defend ourselves. Julia Gillard today said she wanted to raise defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP when the "fiscal circumstances" allow. Meanwhile she'd doing the very opposite: Present spending is now 1.56 per cent of gross domestic product - the lowest since 1938 - and due to fall to 1.49 per cent of GDP next year... Recent reductions are in stark contrast to the 2009 white paper during Kevin Rudd's prime ministership, which predicted annual real growth in defence expenditure of 3 per cent to 2017-18 and 2.2 per cent thereafter to 2030.