His comments came after China announced on Sunday that its military budget for this year would rise 14.7 percent to 35 billion dollars, the latest in a series of double-digit annual increases dating back to the early 1990s.

A Pentagon report last year estimated that China's defense spending was two to three times the publicly announced figure and that the cross-strait military balance was tipping in Beijing's favor.

But even with the increase, China's military spending remained just one seventy-seventh (1/77) of the US military budget, Li said.

Li also emphasized that China had committed itself to no-first-use of nuclear weapons, and promised not to use its atomic weapons against non-nuclear nations.

"I don't know... if any other nuclear country has made such a transparent and sincere pledge to the rest of the world," he said.

Meanwhile the Taiwanese defence ministry said that China had now deployed almost 800 missiles, which could paralyse Taiwan's communications and transport and command centers in a 10-hour bombardment.

The ministry highlighted the mounting military threat, and declassified data on the 1996 missile crisis, in an apparent bid to lobby support for a proposed huge arms purchase from the United States.

The move came amid escalating tensions after Taiwan's independence-leaning President Chen Shui-bian last week scrapped an advisory council on reunification with the Chinese mainland, provoking fury in Beijing.

"Ten years ago, they were already able to precisely project their ballistic missiles into their targeted areas," a defense ministry official said.

"Now they have deployed 784 ballistic missiles with the entire island coming within their range, with the precision margin narrowing from 600 meters (1,980 feet) to 50 meters," he said.

"Armed with the missiles, they can launch five waves of intensive bombings for 10 hours" targeting the island's military commands, communications centers, airports and harbours, army Lieutenant Colonel Chen Chang-hua told reporters.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army flexed its muscle in March 1996 by lobbing four missiles into waters off Taiwan.

The war games were intended to deter Taiwanese from re-electing president Lee Teng-hui, regarded by China as a "splittist."

Lee won the election anyway, and the crisis ended only after Washington sent two carrier battle groups to the waters off Taiwan.

Even though the two sides have been governed separately since 1949, China sees Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification -- by force if necessary.

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