On the first day of the annual meeting of China’s legislature, a Finance Ministry budget report showed that actual spending on law and order last year was 548.6 billion yuan ($83.5 billion), slightly more than what was budgeted for the year.
That compared with officially reported military expenditure of 533.5 billion yuan ($81.2 billion) in 2010.
The same report showed that spending this year on police, state security, armed civil militia, courts and jails would total 624.4 billion yuan ($95 billion), an increase of 13.8% over 2010.
China’s 2011 military budget, by comparison, is 601.1 billion ($91.5 billion), representing a rise of 12.7% over last year, a government spokesman announced Friday.