China’s Ministry of Finance offered a slew of numbers on Wednesday describing how the country plans to spend its money this year. The 2014 budget will reach an eye-popping 15.3 trillion yuan, or about $2.45 trillion – maybe not as exciting as President Obama’s $3.9 trillion proposed budget, but not exactly chump change either.
Where is it all going? You can spend the day poring through the numbers, as China Real Time did. Or the crack WSJ Art Department can put them in a format that makes sense to normal eyes. (It pays to have connections.)
A quick glance tells you a few important things about China’s budget priorities:
The military, already a beneficiary of Beijing’s largesse, will get even more love this year.
Social spending isn’t far behind, in a nod to the rising expectations of China’s increasingly wealthy and educated population.
Affordable housing and the environment – two stated priorities of the Chinese government – saw spending fall last year. Beijing appears to want to change that.
One big caveat to these numbers: China has changed the way it presents its spending on public security, one of the country’s biggest priorities amid rising public frustration over everything from pollution to the wealth gap to ethnic tension. In past years the number was even higher than defense spending. It isn’t clear exactly how the figure has changed.