China defence budget hike smallest in 7 yrs

Beijing, March 6: China on Monday confirmed that it has hiked its military spending by seven per cent to $152 billion after the omission of exact figures from an annual budget report sparked questions over transparency.

While this is the smallest spending in seven years, it is still about three times higher than that of India which is $53.5 billion.

After skipping the customary mention of the figures of defence spending in the work report submitted by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to lawmakers on Sunday, state-run Xinhua news agency on Monday announced that the military budget for this year stands at $152 billion (1.04 trillion yuan).

China’s defence budget for 2017 will grow seven per cent from the actual figure in 2016, Xinhua quoted an official with the Ministry of Finance as saying. This is the first time China’s military spending crossed a trillion yuan.

Last year, China’s military spending was 954.35 billion yuan, a 7.6 per cent increase from 2015.

There was no explanation about why the amount of the annual defence spending was not mentioned in Li’s annual work report to the National People’s Congress on Sunday.

Chinese officials defended the seven per cent hike this year, saying it is still smaller than the 10 per cent increase proposed by President Donald Trump to America’s defence budget to take it to about $654 billion, the highest in the world.

Much of China’s budget this year is expected to go for the development of navy as Beijing looks to expand its influence beyond its shores.

The China-US military tensions are on the rise since former American President Barack Obama adopted the ‘US pivot to Asia’, committing large number of US military forces to be deployed in the Asia Pacific to counter China’s growing military might. — PTI