AP – China yesterday announced a 7.2 per cent increase in its defence budget for the coming year, up slightly from last year’s 7.1 per cent rate of increase.
That marks the eighth consecutive year of single-digit percentage point increases in what is now the world’s second-largest military budget.
The 2023 figure was given as CNY1.55 trillion (USD224 billion), roughly double the figure from 2013.
Along with the world’s biggest standing army, China has the world’s largest navy and recently launched its third aircraft carrier.
According to the United States (US), it also has the largest aviation force in the Indo-Pacific, with over half of its fighter planes consisting of fourth or fifth generation models.
China also boasts a massive stockpile of missiles, along with stealth aircraft, bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons, advanced surface ships and nuclear powered submarines.
The two million-member People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is the military wing of the ruling Communist Party, commanded by a party commission led by president and party leader Xi Jinping.
In his report yesterday to the annual session of China’s Parliament, Premier Li Keqiang said that over the past year, “We remained committed to the Party’s absolute leadership over the people’s armed forces.
“The people’s armed forces intensified efforts to enhance their political loyalty, to strengthen themselves through reform, scientific and technological advances, and personnel training, and to practice law-based governance,” Li said.
He touched on a number of “major achievements” in national defence and military development that have made the PLA a “more modernised and capable fighting force”.
He cited the armed forces’ contributions to border defence, maritime rights protection, counterterrorism and stability maintenance, disaster rescue and relief, the escorting of merchant ships and China’s “zero-COVID” strategy.
“We should consolidate and enhance integration of national strategies and strategic capabilities and step up capacity building in science, technology and industries related to national defence.”
That includes promoting “mutual support between civilian sectors and the military”, he said.
China spent 1.7 per cent of gross domestic product on its military in 2021, according to the World Bank, while the US, with its massive overseas obligations, spent a relatively high 3.5 per cent.
Although no longer increasing at the double-digit annual percentage rates of past decades, China’s defence spending has remained relatively high.
