China has increased the military budget by only 7 percent. (Photo : Getty Images)
China's military expenditure increased very slightly this year. It's the smallest increase in spending for the past four years.
The Ministry of Finance released recently the budget outlay for China in 2017. Military only got a 7 percent increase of 1 trillion yuan.
The increase is the slowest since 1991. Many observers say that China is being secretive of the actual numbers.
Song Kai, China's information officer, said, "We didn't remain private deliberately."
The increase was also slow last year when the budget only took a small jump of $147 billion. Experts believe that China wants to put the budget on social services rather than the People's Liberation Army.
Collin Koh Swee Lean, associate research fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said, "One shouldn't really trust those figures, because Beijing could have hidden budget overlays for such opaque activities as military R&D, or other expenses beyond what it wants the public and the international community to know about."
Despite the small increase in this year's budget, China remains the second to the largest military spender in the world. In 2015, China's military expenditure reached $215 billion, second to the U.S.'s $596 billion.
There are speculations from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute that China is hiding the truth and the actual figures are far from what they say.
The institute thinks that the real spending is 55 percent higher than the actual figure.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump approved the increase of American military budget of $84 billion over two years. There will be reductions in spending for the State Department and federal agencies that are not related to the military.
Chinese state media noted that officials in China are not happy with the small budget.
An official said, "It's not enough. A lot of people in the military won't be happy with this."
