However, he admitted it remained an “arduous, uphill” battle to turn the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into a “world-class” military and hit its modernisation targets by 2027, the centenary of its founding.
Wu said national defence spending would rise to 1.81 trillion yuan (US$250 billion) this year, including 1.78 trillion yuan allocated at the central level.
China’s military budget, the world’s second-largest, has grown by 7.2 per cent annually for the past three years, while economic growth targets have stood at around 5 per cent throughout that time.