China’s importance to defence not on agriculture

In 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping made an appeal to people not to waste food and open call for “Operation Empty Plate”. Star hotels in China made display campaign not to order much food and this restricted customers to limit the order. 

Crops have washed away in China due to heavy floods in 2020 that make the country to import cereals and other food grains from India. Even the nation is struggling to cater enough food to their people, Chinese Communist Party is still allotting more budgets to Defence but not to agriculture.

Chinese defence budget will surpass first time over $200 billion. The announcement made at National People Congress meeting in Beijing. This is slight raise from the budget in 2020. The defence budget saw double-digit increases until 2015. The budget in 2021 was announced as 1.35 trillion yuan ($209 billion), up from 1.27 trillion yuan ($179 billion) in 2020. Overall China increased 6.8% in defence sector. Amid of border tensions, China’s decision is obviously worrisome to India. After increase in budget China’s defence budget has four times more than India’s. 

India spends $49.75 billion on it’s military without adding pensions. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has announced to increase the budget by 1.48% during her budget speech. United States spends $716 billion to maintain the world’s largest military. Analysts predict China would catch up with US military by 2027 which is also significant for China for the completion of 100 years of its PLA. After the eruption of pandemic virus, China has concentrated to modernization of PLA and wants to show supremacy over South China sea.