China is ramping up its military spending to $224 billion per year

AS FAR as military might goes, China is not holding back. The rising superpower has announced a massive increase in its defence spending.

CHINA is ramping its military spending up to 1.1 trillion yuan per year — the equivalent of $A224 billion.

The figure is a dramatic mark-up of 8.1 per cent on the previous year, and comes as China makes an effort to modernise its armed forces.

This marks the rising superpower’s biggest increase in three years.

Speaking at the opening of China’s 13th National People’s Congress, Premier Li Keqiang said China will “advance all aspects of military training and war preparedness, and firmly and resolvedly safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests”.

Mr Li said the country had “basically completed” the target of reducing the size of the armed forces by 300,000 troops, which would leave the People’s Liberation Army’s strength at around two million troops.

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President Xi Jinping has vowed to turn China’s defence force into a “world-class force” capable of fighting and winning wars.

China is spending big on its military, but it’s still nothing compared with the US defence budget.

That said, the Chinese Communist Party insists it poses no threat to other countries.

China is in the process of developing new military capabilities as it looks to assert dominance on the battlefield. These include stealth fighters, electromagnetic railguns, aircraft carriers and anti-satellite missiles.

The country now boasts the world’s second-largest defence budget, but still pales in comparison to the United States’ proposed budget of $716 billion ($A922 billion) for next year.

Zhang Yesui, a spokesman for the legislature, said China’s defence spending as a share of GDP and the budget still remains lower than that of other major nations.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China spends 1.9 per cent of its GDP on the military, compared with 3.3 per cent for the US and 2 per cent for Australia.

Despite the fact that China’s military spending now outpaces its economic growth, Mr Zhang said the increase is just making up for previous insufficient spending.

“In recent years China has increased funding for the military by a modest degree, a large part of which is to make up for the previous shortfalls,” he said.

Beijing has rapidly increased its military spending since the year 2000, with the budget often seeing double-digit growth.

Last month the Philippine Daily Inquirer obtained photos showing China’s military constructions in the South China Sea.

Last month, a set of military intelligence photographs revealed China’s illegal construction of artificial islands in the contested Spratly Islands, featuring impressive equipped military fortresses.

The images showed the air fields, armoured hangars, naval docks, barracks, radar networks and defensive structures on the artificial islands are complete — in the final stages of construction.

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