--FILE--Amphibious armored vehicles march during the military parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Beijing, China, 3 September 2015. After enduring the smallest budget increase in six years, China's military is looking to beef itself up with spending set to jump up to $233 billion by 2020. The 2020 Chinese defense budget will signify a 60% increase from this year's budget of a mere $146 billion, and it will be almost double the $123 billion budget of 2010, according to report by IHS Jane's, a British publishing company specializing in military information. The increased budget is partially explained as a response to increasing regional tensions stemming from territorial disputes in the South China Sea that most recently saw the "unlawful seizure" of a US Navy underwater drone and apparent military installations popping up on artificial islands in the sea, in a move that China's Defense Ministry has cast as arming the "slingshot" against an aggressor "flexing his muscles outside [the] door." "A key trend in [the Asia-Pacific region] is the shift from a traditional focus on territorial defense towards power projection, " said principal analyst at IHS Jane's Craig Caffrey to CNN. "This is new for the region and is likely to increase military-to-military contact between states." Spending for China's military increased by just 7.6% this year, a far cry from the double-digit increases that had been the norm for a number of years. The last single-digit increase in Chinese military spending was 7.5% back in 2010.
