China declared that there will be 7.5 percent increase in military spending in year of 2019, lower than last year as the country is facing economic slowdown, but still makes Asian neighbours nervous.
It pushing efforts to offer the two million-strong People's Liberation Army (PLA) with best hardware, aircraft carriers, spending heavily on stealth warplanes and other weaponry.
Beijing has also come forward to its rhetoric against any independence movements in self-ruled Taiwan and plans to maintain its vast territorial claims in the disputed South China and East China Sea.
The government will invest 1.19 trillion yuan on defence in 2019, after it surged its outlay by 8.1 percent to 1.11 trillion yuan in 2018.
Being the world’s largest army, China’s military investment are still second to the United States, which budgeted $716 billion for defence in 2019.
Li said the government will "strengthen military training under combat conditions, and firmly protect China's sovereignty, security, and development interests."
The lower spending increase comes as the country's economy is slowing, with the government setting a lower growth target of 6.0-6.5 percent.
"China's military expenditure is coordinated with annual Chinese GDP growth," said James Char, a military expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.
"China has other national priorities and an over-militarised national economy can deprive the government of much-needed resources, as what had happened to the former USSR," Char said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has vowed to turn the PLA into a "world class" military by mid-century, has repeatedly called on the army to be combat-ready.
"In Taiwan, you can legitimately worry about the Chinese budget increases, because they coincide with a more aggressive posture towards Taipei,” said Barthelemy Courmont, Asia researcher at the Institute for Strategic and Foreign Relations in Paris.