China on Sunday kicked-off the plenary session of its parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), where it said that it would increase its defence budget to 7.2 per cent in 2023, a slight uptick compared to 7.1 per cent last year.
This is the eighth consecutive year that China has announced a single-digit percentage point increase in its military budget.
According to a report by the Ministry of Finance published on the opening day of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, China will spend 1.55 trillion yuan ($225 billion) on defence this year.
Nikki Haley, the presidential candidate for the US Republican Party's Grand Old Party (GOP), has declared that if elected, she will stop all foreign aid to nations that hate the US. This entails China, Pakistan, and other adversaries as "a strong America doesn't pay off the bad guys".
To help debt-ridden countries in the G20 bloc who have been unable to recover from the post-pandemic economic shocks and the Russia-Ukraine war, India is drafting a proposal whereby it will call upon the credit lending nations like China to take a large haircut on loans. According to Reuters news agency, which has quoted two Indian officials, a meeting will be held in Bengaluru city of India's southern state Karnataka next week where finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the Group of 20 will assemble to hold discussions on the draft.
India's dependence on the import of EV batteries, laptops, mobile phones, and other electronic devices would be significantly reduced since the discovery of a 5.9 million tonnes lithium reserve in Jammu and Kashmir's Reasi District.
At their annual retreat on Saturday (February 4) in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, the foreign ministers of Southeast Asia agreed to conclude discussions with China about a proposed agreement aimed at averting disputes in the disputed South China Sea. In the concluding session of their two-day meeting, the ASEAN ministers also decided to coordinate their efforts to put into effect a five-point agreement that Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the military in Myanmar, and ASEAN leaders signed in 2021 to stop the country's escalating conflict.