China announced today that its defense budget, the world’s second-highest although well behind that of the US, will grow by 7.2% in 2024, unchanged from last year.

The evidence is contained in a working paper released on the sidelines of the annual proceedings of the Chinese parliament.

It is planned to spend 1.66 trillion. yuan ($231.4 billion) on defense, roughly five times more than Washington’s military spending.

The Asian giant continues the “reasonable increase” of the defense budget to “defend its national sovereignty, security and development interests,” Lu Qinqian, a spokesman for the National People’s Congress, explained yesterday Monday during its current annual session.

China’s military spending has been rising for decades, generally at a rate similar to that of the country’s economic growth.

They are viewed with suspicion by the US, Australia, India and the Philippines, as well as other countries, amid various countries’ claims to islands, islets and reefs in the South China Sea.

They worry about Taiwan, an island of 23 million people that China considers a province and seeks to one day reunify, by force if necessary, with the mainland.

According to the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US remains by far the world’s highest military spender, reaching $877 billion in 2022. It was followed by China ($292 billion), Russia ( 86.4), India (81.4), Saudi Arabia (75), Britain (68.5), Germany (55.8), France (53.6), South Korea (46, 4) and Japan (46).

In a separate text, it is repeated that China will “strongly oppose” any activity for Taiwan’s “independence” and any “external interference” in the island’s affairs, which it considers its “internal”.

Perhaps the most important detail in this more or less standardized terminology is the change of wording in the phrase that the Chinese government will vigorously promote “the reunification of China”: the adjective “peaceful” of previous similar texts is missing.