Impact of COVID -19 on defence spending in China: military burden or peacekeeping facilitation?

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically changed the world as we knew it. Although it is still unclear how the economic landscape post COVID-19 and recovery from ‘the great lockdown’ will look like, the pandemic has affected societies and economies in their core: global GDP shrank approximately 3% in 2021 and is predicted to fall further by at least 4% in 2022 increasing poverty and global inequalities (IMF, 2022); total military expenditure increased worldwide by 2.6% in 2020 (SIPRI, 2021); security threats with immediate impact on Peaceland’s[ Autesserre (2014) uses Peaceland to describe the community of foreign organizations, such as the UN and NGOs, engaged in peacekeeping and peacebuilding.] operations.
As the COVID-19 pandemic showed some signs of abating, China’s defence spending, which was the centre of the virus, was approximately $252 billion in 2020 (an increase of 1.9% since 2019 and 76% since 2011). Worth noting, that, China provided $26,666,716 financial support to the U.N. COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan. This article takes a closer look at the basic arguments regarding the increased Chinese defence spending during the period 2020-21 by contacting a narrative literature review. The current review is useful in obtaining a broad perspective on China’s defence spending during the COVID -19 pandemic and its role to peacekeeping, in order to have a more balanced understanding of its rational.