Even with Slowing Growth, China’s Defense Spending Still on Path to Match Western Europe’s

• IHS Jane’s projects global defense spending to reach $1.55T in 2014, the first (slight) increase in years. They expect China’s military budget to overtake the combination of France, Germany and the UK next year. This is consistent with earlier data from SIPRI charted by DID here. In the last couple of years the most aggressive growth has been seen in the Middle East.

• France’s defense exports bounced back [in French] to almost 6.3 billion euros ($8.5B) in 2013, after a slump of just 4.8 billion euros in 2012. 40% of the year’s bookings came from the Middle East. La Tribune points out [in French] that defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian went 6 times to the UAE, 6 times to Qatar and 4 times to Saudi Arabia, within less than 2 years.