While many dismiss China's National People's Congress (NPC) as a "rubber stamp," its annual meeting provides valuable insight into the thinking in Beijing. This year's 10-day conclave, which concluded earlier this week, was scrutinized particularly closely since China is set for a leadership transition later this year. The NPC is considered a bellwether for the changes that transition will ring in.

The meeting itself is a dry, drawn-out affair, primarily filled with work reports — long recitations of goals reached and ambitions for the year to come — and punctuated (in recent years) by meetings with the press at which top leaders provide views on policy. Last week, for example, NPC spokesperson Li Zhaoxing provided the annual gloss on military spending when announcing that the People's Liberation Army budget would increase by 11.2 percent to reach 670.2 billion RMB ($106 billion, a figure considered low by almost every outside source); the PLA budget has recorded annual double-digit increases for two decades.

Mr. Li insists that China's military is for defensive purposes and that China poses no threat to any other country. Few of China's neighbors take comfort in this ritual reassurance.