China plans to increase its defense budget by 7.5 percent in 2010, a major slowdown compared to last year's growth of14.9 percent, a spokesman said here on Thursday.
The planned defense budget is 532.115 billion yuan (about 78 billion U.S. dollars), a rise of about 37 billion yuan from last year's defense expenditure, Li Zhaoxing, spokesman for the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), told a press conference.
It is the first time for China's defense budget growth rate to drop to less than 10 percent in recent years, after a row of consecutive double-digit increase.