Beijing: China’s 2021 defence spending will rise 6.8% from 2020, up just slightly from last year’s budget increase and broadly tracking the government’s modest growth forecast, as the world’s second-largest economy emerges from the pandemic’s fallout. The hike was announced by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the country’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC). Li pledged that efforts to strengthen the People’s Liberation Army, which is developing an array of weapons from stealthy fighters to aircraft carriers, would continue apace in the face of what China views as multiple security threats.
The spending figure, set at 1.4 trillion yuan ($208.5 billion) in the national budget released last week, is closely watched as a barometer of how aggressively the country will beef up its military. Last year China said the defence budget would rise just 6.6%, its slowest rate in three decades, as the economy wilted in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. This will be the sixth year in a row for a single-digit increase.
The budget gives only a raw figure for military expenditure, with no breakdown. Many diplomats and foreign experts believe the country under-reports the real number. China’s reported defence budget in 2021 is about a quarter of United States defence spending, which amounted to $714 billion in fiscal year 2020 and is expected to increase to $733 billion in the 2021 fiscal year.
China applies strict mechanisms of fiscal allocation and budget management on its defence expenditure, which is mainly assigned to personnel, training and sustainment, and equipment, it said. China has voluntarily downsized its armed forces by over four million troops since 1978, according to a white paper released in 2019.
