Global Times: Question: After China announced its 2026 defense budget, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary said that China is increasing its defense expenditure with a high growth rate and is developing its military substantially and rapidly without transparency. Some foreign media claimed that China had maintained increases in defense budget for many years in a row, gradually enlarging the gap in military capabilities with other regional countries. What’s your comment on this?
Jiang Bin: We have released information regarding the specifics of China’s 2026 defense budget, making public its size, composition, and allocation and leaving no room for doubt. China’s defense spending accounts for less than 1.5% of its GDP. It is significantly lower than that of major military powers like the U.S., and is also below the global average and the NATO benchmark of over 2% of GDP. The increase in China’s defense budget is characterized by a reasonable, moderate, and restrained growth. Such increase is solely meant to meet the needs of safeguarding China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests, and of maintaining world peace and stability. The stronger the Chinese military, the more secure the world would be.
When Japanese politicians hype up China’s defense budget and the so-called China threat, it is nothing more than a thief crying “stop thief”, so as to find excuses for Japan’s hidden ambition of military expansion. Due to its history of launching wars of aggression, Japan should be “completely disarmed” and shall not maintain industries that would enable her to re-arm for war, in accordance with such legally-binding international instruments as the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Proclamation, and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender. It must be pointed out that Japan’s defense budget has grown for 14 years in a row and increased over 60% in the past five years, reaching 2% of its GDP. Japan’s per capita military spending is more than three times that of China. The Japanese side is making drastic efforts to break away from the constraints of its pacifist Constitution. It has developed and deployed offensive weapons far beyond the needs for exclusive defense, and pursued remilitarization without ever a reckoning with its past atrocities. These are the real threat to regional peace and stability. We urge the Japanese side to look at itself in the mirror more often, stop its misleading smearing campaigns, and never repeat the doomed mistake of militarism.
