HONG KONG/TAIPEI – China will boost defense spending by 7% in 2026, it said on Thursday, March 5, the lowest rate in five years but still outpacing wider economic growth targets and the rest of Asia at a time of growing regional tension, including over Taiwan.

Security analysts and regional military attaches are watching China’s budget closely as it scrambles to modernize the military by 2035, while stepping up deployments across East Asia and purging the top brass to tackle graft.

China will improve combat readiness and accelerate the development of “advanced combat capabilities,” Premier Li Qiang said at the opening of parliament’s annual meeting, while unveiling a broader GDP growth forecast of 4.5% to 5%.

“All these steps will boost our strategic capacity to safeguard China’s sovereignty, security and development interests,” Li said in his work report, adding that President Xi Jinping held ultimate command responsibility.

The figure of 7%, which follows three years of annual rises of 7.2% and is the lowest since 6.8% in 2021, is part of a spending campaign in which China’s military has developed new advanced missiles, ships, submarines and surveillance methods.

It comes amid the highest-profile purge of upper military ranks in decades, with the two most senior generals ensnared in disciplinary investigations.

Zhang Youxia, a veteran military ally of Xi, was placed under investigation in January, while another, He Weidong, was expelled in October last year.

The purge leaves just two members of the usual seven on the supreme Central Military Commission, Xi himself as its chair, and a newly promoted vice chairman, Zhang Shengmin.

The government remains committed to the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s “absolute leadership over the armed forces,” Li added.

“Guided by the principle of ensuring political loyalty in the military, we will continue to improve military political conduct and make major strides toward the centenary goals of the People’s Liberation Army.”

Some regional analysts believe the founding anniversary, which falls next year, will bring further increases in military drills and deployments around Taiwan, the democratically governed island that Beijing views as its territory.

‘Reunification’

China would “resolutely fight against separatist forces aimed at ‘Taiwan independence’ and oppose external interference,” Li vowed in comments broadly similar to last year’s.

This would “promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and advance the cause of national reunification,” he added.

Taiwan’s government, which says only the island’s people can decide their future, had no immediate reaction to Li’s remarks.

Li toned down a warning about the international environment from a year ago, calling it “complex and challenging” rather than “increasingly complex and severe” in a description that had cited “changes unseen in a century.”

In Tokyo, Minoru Kihara, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, said China was not sufficiently transparent about its continued high level of defense spending and stronger capabilities.

Despite China’s efforts to change the status quo in the East China Sea and South China Sea by “force or coercion,” Japan would keep up efforts to build constructive, stable ties with it, Kihara told a press briefing.

While the graft crackdown left gaps in the PLA’s command structure and dented short-term readiness, it was expected to keep improving its capabilities and broader modernization, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said.

Growth in Chinese military spending was consistently outpacing the rest of Asia amid a global surge in defense budgets, the London-based IISS said in a report last month.

China’s share of Asia’s total military expenditure grew to almost 44% in 2025, up from an average of 37% between 2010 and 2020, it added.

China gives no breakdown of defense spending, though its budget of 1.91 trillion yuan ($277 billion) is just about a quarter of a $1-trillion defense bill Donald Trump, the president of the United States, signed into law in December. – Rappler.com