The increase in spending was primarily for purposes such as raising salaries and allowances of military personnel and improving living conditions, increasing investment in weapons and equipment and infrastructure, training, compensation for price rises, and increasing expenses for international cooperation in non-traditional security fields, it adds.

"It's meaningless to say just that defense expenditure has increased," Zhang said. "The important aspect is what the increase is used for, military expansion or national defense."

Improving the living conditions of military personnel was the major use of the increased expenditure, military expert Wang Erliang said.

"The facts prove that China's increased defense expenditure is mainly for defense and army development," military expert Yao Yunzhu said.

China strongly opposes hegemony and military expansion, and would pose no threat to other countries, Yao said.

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