China's Marine showed her J-15T fighter plane on the Zhuhai Air Show 2024 on November 12, 2024.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty pictures
China increased its defense spending by 7.2% this year on Wednesday to “protect” the same growth rate as in the past two years, such as Beijing.
In a official government report released in the parliament, China proposed a national defense budget of 1.78 trillion yuan (244.99 billion dollars) for the 2025 financial year.
The increased defense budget, which is far beyond China's economic growth destination for around 5%this year, takes place because Western governments are trying to improve military expenses to strengthen their own security.
The European Union announced on Tuesday that it could mobilize up to 800 billion euros ($ 841 billion) in order to support the support for Ukraine in the full invasion of Russia. The move followed that the United States has abrupt military help for Ukraine.
Last year China organized an increase in defense spending by 7.2% to 1.67 trillion Yuan, the same growth rate as in the previous year. According to official data, Beijing increased by 7.1% in 2022 and 6.8% in 2021.
When Lou Qinjian, spokesman for the third session of the 14th National People's Congress, was asked about Chinese defense spending on Tuesday, reporter said that “peace must be protected from strength”.
This is possible after an official translation of his mandarin -language remarks.
China's defense expenditure as a share of GDP has been less than 1.5%for many years, said Lou and added that this expenditure rate is lower than the global average.
China is still the second largest military donor in the world behind the United States, which set the military budget for 2025 at 850 billion US dollars.
Regardless of this, the expenditure planned for public security this year was increased by 7.3%, the official explanation showed a great increase compared to the 1.4% increase in the previous year.
– Sam Meredith from CNBC contributed to this report.