China said it would bolster its military spending by 12.2 per cent in 2014, continuing an almost unbroken string of double-digit annual increases over the past two decades.
The government said that the official defence budget would grow to Rmb808bn ($132bn). The figure was included in a report that Premier Li Keqiang delivered to the annual meeting of the country’s largely ceremonial legislature on Wednesday.
The announcement of China’s defence budget has become an annual ritual, buried in the mass of documents published customarily on the first day of the country’s annual National People’s Congress, a multi-day pageant of show-democracy in Beijing.