The 2026 Chinese defense budget has been officially unveiled. On the morning of March 5th, the Fourth Session of the 14th National People’s Congress opened in Beijing. According to the report on the draft central and local fiscal budgets for 2026 deliberated at the meeting, this year’s defense expenditure is RMB 1.909561 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 7%. This marks the 11th consecutive year that China’s defense budget has maintained single-digit growth, with a slight downward adjustment in growth rate compared to 7.2% in 2025. According to Xinhua News Agency, the draft budget submitted to the National People’s Congress for deliberation specifies that approximately RMB 1.9 trillion will be allocated for national defense. Converted into US dollars, this amounts to approximately USD 275 billion. Over the six years since 2021, China’s defense budget growth rate has consistently remained around 7%. From 2023 to 2025, the growth rate remained flat for three consecutive years, at 7.2%.
Song Zhongping, a military expert, stated that China has consistently emphasized the principle of “moderation” in the growth rate of its defense expenditure. The increase is kept moderate in accordance with national defense security needs and the development of the national economy, pursuing a balanced development between economic construction and national defense construction, rather than “pursuing military expansion”. He emphasized that a portion of the defense budget will be used to improve the treatment of officers and soldiers and cope with inflation factors; another important part is training funds, covering daily training and equipment maintenance, which require substantial financial support.
Another noteworthy investment direction is the upgrading and upgrading of weaponry. Military expert Wang Yunfei pointed out that the more advanced modern weaponry is, the higher the content of cutting-edge technology it contains, and the corresponding increase in expenditure on research and development, production, and maintenance. Therefore, the continuous and stable growth of defense expenditure is a necessary requirement for maintaining the production level and quality improvement of China’s weaponry.
The relative level of China’s defense expenditure remains restrained. According to Xinhua News Agency, China’s defense expenditure has been kept below 1.5% of GDP for many years, while NATO estimates that almost all its member countries have reached the target of 2% of GDP in 2025 and have pledged to further increase defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. In terms of per capita, Japan’s defense expenditure and per capita expenditure on military personnel in fiscal year 2025 were more than three times and twice that of China respectively.
From a global perspective, the world is far from peaceful. The Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Palestine-Israel conflict continue to drag on, and the security situation around China also faces complex challenges. Over the past year, the United States has condoned certain regional countries to continuously worsen the situation in the South China Sea, and its arms sales to Taiwan have exacerbated instability in the Taiwan Strait. The rise of right-wing militarism in Japan has further worsened the regional security environment. These factors have posed real pressure on China to safeguard its national sovereignty and security.
