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		</div><p>Military spending in China will rise by the lowest amount in six years amid slowing economic growth and a 300,000 cut in troop numbers.</p>
<p>Fu Ying, the spokeswoman for the National People&#8217;s Congress, said the country will boost military spending by about 7% to 8% this year.</p>
<p>She told reporters that China needs to consider its defence needs, economic development and the country&#8217;s fiscal position in drafting the military budget.</p>
<p>The People&#8217;s Liberation Army is being trimmed to 2 million troops from 2.3 million, although it will still be the world&#8217;s largest standing military.</p>
<p>It remains a major priority for China&#8217;s leaders who have pushed an increasingly aggressive campaign to assert territorial claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea, raising tensions with its neighbours.</p>
<p>This year&#8217;s budget comes as spending at all levels of government is being curbed because of a drop in the economic growth rate, which fell to a 25-year low of 7.3% in 2015 and is expected to decline further this year.</p>
<p>For most years since 2000, China posted double-digit increases in military spending, and this will be only the third time in that period with a single-digit increase, including 2010&#8217;s increase of 7.5%.</p>
<p>China provides no breakdown of its defence budget and Pentagon and global arms bodies estimate actual military spending may be anywhere from 40 to 50% more.</p>
<p>That is because the official budget does not include the costs of high-tech weapons imports, research and development, and other programmes.</p>
<p>China says its military is strictly for defensive purposes, but takes a broad view of what constitutes threats to its core interests &#8211; including protecting maritime territory that is in dispute with neighbouring countries.</p>
<p>The aggressive programme of building islands on reefs and atolls in the South China Sea as part of its campaign to claim virtually the entire region has unnerved China&#8217;s neighbours.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, China continues a low-level campaign of confronting Japanese ships and aircraft near a set of contested East China Sea islands.</p>
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