China has increased its military budget to 1.27 trillion yuan for 2020, a 6.6 per cent rise from last year despite the economic decline in the first quarter of the year, the country’s top legislative body revealed on Friday.
This year’s growth in defence spending marked a continuous expansion over two decades in the 21st century. The number has boomed over 12 times from 107.6 billion yuan in 1999.
However, the rate of increase this year is the lowest in 20 years. It came after the 6.8 per cent shrinkage in GDP in the first quarter of 2020 – the first contraction since quarterly records began in 1992 – after an extensive shutdown to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Beijing said it always keeps military spending below 2 per cent of its annual GDP. However, China’s official figures have long been criticised as lacking transparency with significant omissions of important items. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimated the actual expenditure on defence in 2019 was US$261 billion, rather than the announced 1.19 trillion yuan (US$178 billion).
China’s top leaders come together for condensed version of annual meeting after two-month delay because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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