"China’s defence budget is said to have grown only in single-digit figures since 2016, with the PLA enjoying double-digit increases for nearly thirty years before that.

"Over the years, Western analysis of China’s defence budget has claimed that the People’s Republic of China does not officially reveal its actual expenditure on defence and that available figures are way below the expenses actually incurred by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The challenge is that it is difficult to make real estimates of China’s defence expenditure in the absence of clearly defined heads of expenditure," the expert wrote in his article published in Modern Diplomacy.

"Military expenditure figures published by China are usually only the total figure for ‘national defence’ expenditure, with no disaggregated information. Occasionally, China provides a breakdown of expenditure, normally across the three categories of personnel, training & maintenance, and equipment," he said.

  Fabien Baussart said China continues its military modernization across the spectrum and aims for advances in high technology that will give it an edge over its adversaries.

"This is the key lesson to be derived from any analysis of its defence expenditure. While statistics can vary from time to time, according to the figures used to calculate the total budget, analysts still don’t have a full picture of the money that is going to building the Chinese war machine and this is worrisome. Just one instance of this will suffice to illustrate the issue," he said.

"For over eight months last year, China mobilised 60,000 troops ostensibly for military exercises, but were in fact used to occupy contentious positions in Eastern Ladakh against India and was very much a part of the offensive strategy adopted by the PLA across its periphery, displaying new weapons and equipment. Strangely though this deployment did not find a mention in the 35-page Work Report submitted by Premier Li Keqiang to the National People’s Congress recently," he said.