Countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan have criticized China for the rapid rise in its defense budget, which has maintained a double-digit growth rate for almost two decades. But as usual their scaremongering focuses on the size of the figures while ignoring the reasons behind them.

China's military spending is not a threat to neighboring countries. In fact, there are three reasons for the rise in China's military spending:

First, technological progress inevitably leads to periods when there is a rapid growth in a country's military spending. Advances in military technology bring about intensive upgrading of weaponry, which increases the cost of weaponry and directly leads to a rise in military spending. China is currently updating its second and third generation weapons. However, its level of weaponry still lags behind the most advanced international levels by two or three decades.