China plans 10% rise in defence spending as Xi courts military

China will push through a 10.7% rise in its defence spending again this year, a sign that its new leaders are currying favour with the military even as the economy slows.

Military spending will rise to 720 billion yuan  this year. The figure is more than double Britain's defence spending of around 34billion pounds. It is still dwarfed by the 470 billion pounds spent by the United States.

China has raised its defence budget by double digits each year for most of the past two decades. But this year's rise comes against a backdrop of slowing growth, with GDP forecast to rise by 7.5%, compared with more than 10 per cent for most of the past decade.

Xi Jinping, the incoming Chinese president, appears to be courting the military by protecting the defence budget and has already made a series of high-profile visits to army, navy and air force bases.

A spokesman for the National People's Congress (NPC), whose 3,000 delegates will rubber-stamp the defence budget next week, denied that China's military build-up was a sign of aggression.

"Strengthening China's defence capability will be conducive to further stability in the region and will be conducive to world peace," she said.

The release of the defence budget came as Wen Jiabao gave his final speech to the NPC as he stands down as China's prime minister. In a review of the achievements of the past five years, he noted that China's economy had nearly doubled in size, from 2.83 trillion pounds to 5.5 trillion pounds.