The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently released its data on the global arms trade for 2017, and it is big news for Asia as a whole, and for China and the United States in particular.

In the first place, SIPRI confirms that Asia (including the Indian subcontinent and Oceania) has remained the world’s single largest arms market for the past decade.

According to the Institute, Asia accounted for a plurality (42 per cent) of all international arms transfers for the period 2013 to 2017, easily outpacing the Middle East (the world’s other large arms market) at 32 per cent.

While its market share was down slightly from 2008 to 2012 (when it made up 46 per cent), Asian arms transfers were actually up during the more recent period, as globally, arms exports have increased.

… Richard Bitzinger is a visiting senior fellow with the Military Transformation Programme in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. This commentary first appeared on RSIS Commentaries.