China increased its 2021 defense budget by 6.8 percent to 1.35 trillion yuan ($209 billion) in a quicker pace than last year’s growth, which analysts believe is normal, steady and restrained as the country resiliently emerges from the wreckage of COVID-19 pandemic.
The budget increase, released in a draft budget report issued at the opening of the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature, on Friday, is slightly higher than the 6.6 percent hike in 2020 when the country and the rest of the world were still struggling to fight the unprecedent COVID-19 pandemic that upended the globe. […]
China has kept its defense spending at around 1.3 percent of its GDP in recent years, which is far below the average global level of 2.6 percent, data shows.
The US, by far the world’s top military spender, has spent about four times China’s figure in recent years. A US defense budget proposal in February 2020 for fiscal year 2021 requested $740.5 billion for national security, $705.4 billion of which is for the US Department of Defense. Läs artikel