BEIJING (Reuters) – After an announced slowdown in official defence spending, China’s President Hu Jintao has told military commanders that defense modernization remains a priority but must integrate with economic development, state media said.

China held the rise in its military budget to 7.5 percent in 2010 compared to spending in 2009, ending a succession of double-digit rises in spending on the People’s Liberation Army, an official said last week. In 2009, PLA spending rose by 14.9 percent. “The military must conscientiously obey and serve the broader picture of the tasks of the Party and country,’’ Hu told a meeting on Friday of military commanders and PLA representatives attending the nation’s annual parliament session, which ends on Sunday.

China “must more conscientiously integrate national defense and military development into the system of national economic and social development,’’ said Hu.

While foreign experts say the official numbers understate China’s real military outlays, the slowdown prompted oblique grumbling from one retired PLA major general and comment from an air force commander that spending will be constrained. “It will be quite tight,’’ Li Xuezhong, a PLA air vice marshall, told Reuters last week on the sidelines of the annual meeting of parliament, speaking of the defence budget.

In comments published in the official Liberation Army Daily on Saturday, President Hu appeared to both reassure PLA officers and remind them that their loyalty to the ruling Communist Party and its priorities is paramount. As such, Hu’s meeting with the PLA, reported prominently across the country’s state-controlled media, appeared to be a public show that the military accepts the government’s priorities.

Hu said protecting national security and sovereignty remain top concerns, and called for better “coordinated economic and national defense development.’’

Accompanying pictures showed him dressed in military greens marking his status as Chairman of the Central Military Commission, which commands the PLA. His published comments made no mention of the PLA budget.

Hu’s comments come after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last week, in a bid to narrow the wealth gap that economists blame for dampening domestic consumption, announced increases of 8.8 percent on social spending and 12.8 percent on rural outlays this year, higher than the 7.5 percent increase for the military