China's defense budget will jump 7.5 percent this year, down slightly from last year's 8.1 percent, as Beijing grapples with ongoing territorial disputes and seeks to create a "world-class" military, a draft budget from the annual session of the country's rubber-stamp parliament showed Tuesday.
The rate is slower than last year but will still outpace the economic growth target for the year, which Beijing set at 6.0 to 6.5 percent, a separate report showed.
The 2019 draft defense budget, submitted to the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), which opened Tuesday, would total 1.19 trillion yuan ( $177.61 billion), the state-run Xinhua News Agency said.
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