This year, China’s defense budget increased by 7% year-on-year. According to the Chinese military, the additional budget will be used to promote military modernization, support advanced weapons development and national defense technology innovation. The military also stated it will strengthen full-chain control and performance evaluation of military spending, ensuring that every penny is spent on the cutting edge.
According to the “Ministry of National Defense Release” WeChat public account, Zhang Xiaogang, spokesperson for the PLA and People’s Armed Police delegations at the Fourth Session of the National People’s Congress, said in an interview on Tuesday that in order to safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests, the Chinese government has, in recent years, maintained a reasonable and stable increase in defense spending alongside sustained healthy economic and social development, promoting the simultaneous improvement of both national defense and economic strength.
The draft budget report submitted by the Ministry of Finance to the National People’s Congress last week shows that this year’s defense budget for China is approximately 1.9 trillion RMB (about 1.08 trillion ringgit), a 7% year-on-year increase.
Zhang Xiaogang pointed out that the increased defense expenditure will mainly be used in the following areas: First, in line with the new “three-step” strategy for national defense and military modernization, advancing the integrated development of mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization to enhance strategic capabilities to safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests. Second, optimizing the joint operations system, promoting the large-scale, practical, and systematic development of new-domain and new-quality combat forces, upgrading and transforming traditional combat forces, and strengthening advanced combat capability building.
He continued, third, accelerating the development of advanced weaponry and national defense technology innovation, and speeding up the construction of modern logistics. Fourth, continuously deepening political training, solidly promoting actual-combat military training, optimizing military human resources policies and systems, improving the standard of education in military academies, and forging a high-quality, professional, and new-type military talent team.
Zhang Xiaogang also said that the military will advance military budget management reforms, ensure the dynamic balance of military budget supply and demand, strengthen full-chain control and performance evaluation of military spending, and ensure every penny is spent on the cutting edge.