China raises defense budget by 7.2% for 2024

Beijing: China on Tuesday announced a defense budget draft for 2024 worth 1.66554 trillion yuan ($231.36 billion), an increase of 7.2 percent from the previous year. The proposed defense budget was released in a draft budget report issued at the opening of the second session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature.

China’s defense budget has maintained single-digit growth for nine consecutive years since 2016. The growth rate was also set at 7.2 percent in 2023, while stably moved between six and eight percent in recent years. Zhang Junshe, a Chinese military expert, told the Global Times that China’s defense expenditure has been stable in recent years, and the consecutive single-digit growth showed that the increase is moderate and reasonable.

Many countries have hiked their military expenditures in recent years, Zhang said. Zhang continued to note that, compared with other major military powers, China’s defense expenditure in share of its GDP is also at a low level. In recent years, China’s defense spending has generally accounted only about 1.3 percent of the country’s GDP. China can easily raise its military expenditure more radically thanks to the country’s comprehensive development, and the fact that it is not doing so reflects the restraint in the setting of defense budget, the analysts said.