March 5 (UPI) — China will increase its military spending by 8.1 percent in 2018 in a bid to further modernize weapons and vessels for the world’s largest army, officials said Monday.
Chinese government officials released a budget document Monday that showed the government’s plan to spend about $175 billion across all branches of the People’s Liberation Army.
“A large part of the growth of the defense budget is to make up for the low military spending in the past and is mainly used to upgrade equipment and improve the welfare of servicemen and women and the living and training conditions of grassroots troops,” said Zhang Yesui, a spokesman for China’s National People’s Congress, according to CNN.
The 8.1 percent increase is slightly higher than last year’s boost of 7 percent.
Despite the increase, China still lags far behind U.S. military spending, which is expected to increase by $80 billion next year to a total of $686 billion.
Yesui also pointed out that China spends less of its gross domestic product on its military than other countries.
“If we take a look at the share of China’s defense budget in China’s GDP or national fiscal spending and in per capita terms, China’s defense input is still smaller than most developing countries,” he said, according to the Financial Times.
China says it spends 1.3 percent of its GDP on military spending. Other independent estimates, such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, put that figure at 1.9 percent in 2016.
The United States, meanwhile, spent 3.3 percent of its GDP on military spending.
Only Israel (5.8 percent), United Arab Emirates (5.7 percent), Russia (5.3 percent) and Saudi Arabia (10 percent), spent more of their GDP on defense than the United States.
