Chinese military spending has risen for 26 consecutive years Stockholm: Global military expenditure rose by 2.6% to $1.98 trillion last year even as some defence funds were reallocated to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a report issued on Monday (April 26). The five biggest spenders in 2020, which together accounted for 62% of military spending worldwide, were the United States, China, India, Russia and Britain in that order. "We can say with some certainty that the pandemic did not have a significant impact on global military spending in 2020," SIPRI researcher Diego Lopes da Silva said in a statement. As global GDP declined because of the pandemic, military spending as a share of GDP reached a global average of 2.4% in 2020, up from 2.2% in 2019.