As China continues its military modernization push amid a disturbed geopolitical landscape, it has announced a 7.2 % increase in its defense budget for this year, keeping with its 2024 increase.
As Chinese Premier Li Qiang was scheduled to deliver the government work report at the NPC’s opening session on Wednesday ( Mar 5 ), the pot is projected to increase to 1.78 trillion yuan ( US$ 245.6 billion ).
The NPC meeting and the conference of the nation’s leading political advisory body, which are held annually at the Two Sessions, are where the headline figure is revealed.
The most recent number represents the national defense budget’s 10th straight season of single-digit growth. China’s defense funds increased by 7.2 percent next year.
NPC spokesman Lou Qinjian stated at a press conference on Tuesday ( Mar 4 ) that” China’s defense budget has been stagnating at less than one-third of the GDP ( GDP ) for many years, lower than the global average.”
China’s defense spending is carefully monitored as a indicator of how Beijing may increase its military might, particularly as it struggles with making tensions in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait and a growing Sino-US conflict.
China’s President Xi Jinping stated in 2022 that it wants to “basically full” the “modernization of national defense and the military” by 2035 and to create a “world-class military” by the middle of the 20th century.
He has also emphasized that the modernization of the military is essential to “guarding national independence, security, and development passions.”
The increased defense budget by China’s Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, according to Professor Kerry Brown, chairman of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, comes at a” carefully important” time, as American competition becomes more difficult under the Trump administration and security challenges become more difficult.
With America engaging in combat with its allies and rivals, the earth is becoming incredibly chaotic, he observed, and the majority of nations will be very defensive in this kind of atmosphere.
China is “defensive at the best of times,” and this is even more so now because of the increased vulnerability that its culture and America are likely feeling, which is difficult to predict.