China is set to grow its defence spending by 6.8 per cent this year, a slight uptick compared with last year’s increase of 6.6 per cent amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Defence spending this year will rise to 1.36 trillion yuan (S$281 billion), up from 1.27 trillion-yuan last year, figures from the country’s Budget yesterday showed. Dr Collin Koh, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said this military budget “is an outcome of the attempt to balance economic sentiment and the need to push on with military modernisation amid what Beijing continues to perceive as a challenging security environment”.