on Sunday March 5 Beijing announced an increase in its military spending due to international threats.

The increase in the world’s second-largest defence budget came as Beijing announced an economic growth goal of around five per cent for this year — one of its lowest in decades.

The country’s planned budgets for the year put defence spending at 1.55 trillion yuan ($225 billion), a 7.2pc rise and the quickest rate of increase since 2019. It officially rose 7.1pc last year.

Outgoing Premier Li Keqiang told delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC) that “external attempts to suppress and contain China are escalating”.

Beijing says its military spending for defensive purposes is a comparatively low percentage of its GDP and that critics want to demonise it as a threat to world peace.

“The armed forces should intensify military training and preparedness across the board, develop new military strategic guidance, devote greater energy to training under combat conditions and make well-coordinated efforts to strengthen military work in all directions and domains,” Premier Li said.

Takashi Kawakami, a professor of Takushoku University in Tokyo, said China would probably give priority to its nuclear capability.

“As China strengthens the new area of cognitive warfare over Taiwan, I think it will also use the budget to build up its cyber and space capabilities, as well as its submarine forces to target undersea cables,” he said.

China’s reported defence budget in 2023 is about a quarter of proposed US spending, though many diplomats and foreign experts believe Beijing under-reports the real number.

The fiscal 2023 US defence budget authorises US$858 billion in military spending and includes funding for purchases of weapons, ships and aircraft, and support for Taiwan and for Ukraine as it fights an invasion by Russia.

China has long argued that it needs to close the gap with the United States. China, for example, has three aircraft carriers, compared with 11 in active service for the United States.

The Ukraine war has prompted some elements in China’s military-industrial complex to call for an increase in the defence budget.

An article published last October in the official journal of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, a central government ministry responsible for wartime logistics, recommended an increase in the military budget given surges in defence spending from NATO member-states besides the United States.

“This matter is not about participating in the international arms race, but defending our national security,” it said. 

Source: Agencies/zl