China hikes defence budget to $152b

China has hiked its military spending by seven percent to $152 billion, about three times higher than that of India, as Beijing braced for countering America's push into the disputed South China Sea.

After skipping the customary mention of the figures of defence spending in the work report submitted by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to lawmakers on Sunday, state-run Xinhua news agency yesterday announced that the military budget for this year stands at 1.04 trillion yuan ($152 billion).

China's defence budget for 2017 will grow seven percent from the actual figure in 2016, Xinhua quoted an official with ministry of finance as saying yesterday.

"The country's military spending this year will stand at 1.04 trillion yuan (about US 152 billion) with 1.02 trillion yuan from the central budget," the Xinhua report said.

This is the first time that China's military spending crossed a trillion yuan. Last year China's military spending was 954.35 billion yuan, a 7.6 percent increase from 2015.

China's defence budget is about three times higher than India's $53.5 billion.

There was no explanation about why the amount of the annual defence spending was not mentioned in Li's annual work report to the National People's Congress (NPC) on Sunday.

On March 4, NPC spokesperson Fu Ying said China's defence budget will be increased by seven percent accounting for 1.3 percent of the country's GDP, compared with Nato members' pledge to dedicate at least two percent of GDP to defence.