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China Increases Defense Spending Amid Lagging Economy

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – As China struggles to manage an economic downturn that includes slow growth and high youth unemployment, the ruling Chinese Communist Party announced Tuesday that it is increasing its defense budget by 7.2 percent, the Associated Press reports. 

China has the second-highest defense budget after the United States; the latest increase will bring it up to 1.6 trillion yuan ($222 billion). 

According to AP analysts, China’s currently tense relations with the US, Taiwan, and Japan, among others, and  “competing claims to the crucial South China Sea” have spurred spending on “high-tech military technologies from stealth fighters to aircraft carriers and a growing arsenal of nuclear weapons.” 

China’s defense budget has more than doubled since 2015. The World Bank reported that the country’s defense spending equaled 1.6 percent of its GDP in 2022, the last year for which figures were available. The US, by comparison, spent 3.5 percent of its GDP on defense in the same year, AP reports. 

The Chinese government announced this year’s official defense budget at the opening of the legislature’s annual meeting, AP reports.  “We will provide stronger financial guarantees for efforts to modernize our national defense and the armed forces on all fronts and consolidate and enhance integrated national strategies and strategic capabilities,” Premier Li Qiang told the gathered assembly.